Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

She had scoured through every single ‘roommate wanted’ ad in the paper, and all of them had turned out to be worthless. The first girl, Anne Something-Or-Other, had found another girl from her school. Carl Sturm was almost fifty and a total sleaze, not to mention how much his apartment smelled. The next guy kept touching her, even after she threatened him. Two more girls had already found roommates, and the last turned out to be some sort of a drug exchange thing. To say the least, she was pissed off. 

The heat and humidity, even now at midnight, made her clothes stick to her skin, and her skin stick to the uncomfortable metal bench at the bus stop. She didn’t even know why she was sitting there since she didn’t actually have enough money on her for a bus fare. Part of her knew she could always go back to Go City, and her brothers, and the thankless life of a superhero, but a bigger part of her would rather be homeless than have to sheepishly return and listen to Hego- Heath - lecture her about the importance of always letting him know exactly where she was at all times and blah, blah, blah. 

Just as she began to think she at least was lucky enough to be alone, another person came walking down the street. In the shadows, his slumped shoulders and slow, shuffle of a walk seemed eerie and vaguely threatening. As he stepped into the light of a street lamp, any fear she felt vanished. He looked like a real poindexter type, young, scrawny, and fidgety. He wore khakis and a dark blue shirt with long sleeves, despite the heat. His geeky ensemble was completed with coke-bottle glasses which, even from twenty feet away, she could tell made his eyes look beady and small. He held a stack of books in his arms and seemed to be struggling not to drop anything. A pencil fell from a hole in his backpack, and she watched him as he stood there and watched it roll away. 

Even all that, however, wasn’t what made her fear fade away. No self-respecting creep of a guy that she had ever known would let themselves cry in public. Not that there were many other people out and about at this time. Maybe he just expected to still be alone, she reasoned. But even with that thought, she couldn’t bring herself to feel nervous, she didn’t even feel like she would need her plasma powers to fight this guy off if something happened. 

Without a word, he sat down on the bench as far away from her as he could possibly sit. He clutched his books to his chest, letting out the occasional sniffle. Just to be safe she watched him from the corner of her eye, but he only shifted the books and checked his watch. He glanced at her once, though she couldn’t be sure he had meant to look at her, or if he was watching for the bus past her. And then he went right back to fidgeting with his books.

Just when she was beginning to question whether or not she should ask him what his deal was he asked, “Do you know if the Eight-Four bus came already?” He hadn’t even looked at her when he said it. 

“Well, I know the one at three this afternoon came,” she said. She’d meant it as a joke, but instead of smiling like she’d hoped he shot her an offended sort of look.

“Whatever,” he muttered after a few awkward seconds of silence. He pushed his glasses up his face to rub his fist over his eyes and looked away from her again.

“I was here for almost an hour before you got here, and I’ve only seen the Seven-Three.” She shrugged as he looked at her again.

“Oh,” he moaned, his head thumping down onto his books. She wasn’t particularly used to seeing people cry, and the stray tears he’d wiped off his face before sitting down had been jarring enough, but actually seeing him actively crying shook her to the core.

“What’s your deal?” She asked, realizing only moments later how tactless and rude she sounded. She felt a flash of guilt, before justifying to herself that she hadn’t really been allowed to speak to people outside of her brothers in half a decade. 

He shot her a teary-eyed glare and shot off the bench. Without thinking, and sure as hell without knowing why she stood up and followed him as he began walking down the street. It didn’t take her very long to catch up with him. When he noticed her trailing a step behind him he yelped, and the books finally came tumbling out of his arms. 

He let out a short frustrated half-scream before bending down to pick up his books. “Are you just going to stand there,” he snapped, “or will you help me?”

She fought the deeply ingrained instinct to help whenever she was asked, reminding herself that she ran away for a reason. “Why should I? They’re your books!”

For a moment he sputtered out strange incoherent sounds before managing, “Well, then leave me be.” 

Only as he said this did she finally realize that he didn’t know who she was. For years she hadn’t been able to leave the house without being noticed, asked for autographs, or help in some manner or another. At first, she’d enjoyed the attention. Now, at sixteen, she hated it. And here, for the first time in half a decade, stood a person who actually didn’t know who she was—and somehow she hated that too.

“You didn’t answer my question,” she said, in lieu of asking how the hell he didn’t recognize her. Sure, she’d changed out of her jumpsuit, but even when she walked around Go City with a hat and oversized hoodie on, she would be surrounded before she could even take a breath of fresh air. 

The guy swiped a fist over his eyes again, wiping away a final stray tear. “I said leave me alone.” All of his books back in his arms, he began walking away from her again.  

She couldn’t explain why she made the decision to keep following him, hell, she couldn’t explain why she’d started talking to him in the first place, but she did. 

After a minute or so of her trailing behind him, he stopped. “Are you just going to follow me like some stray puppy? Go home, kid.”

“I’m not a kid!” She protested. 

He turned to look at her. “How old are you? Fourteen? Fifteen? You look like a kid to me.”

She crossed her arms over her chest. “Says the crybaby.”

“It’s been a very long day, I’ll have you know!”

She shrugged “Same here, still don’t see me crying.”

“Whatever. You’re still a kid. What are you even doing alone around here? You could get hurt.”

“What do you care? And I’ll have you know that I could defend myself way better than you could, poindexter.”

He looked at her for a long few moments, scanning her up and down like he was trying his darndest to telepathically learn her life’s story. “You have nowhere to go,” he finally said. He stated it as if he knew for sure, and she hated him at that moment, just because he was right. “If you got kicked out, I can’t say I blame them.” He looked smug, and then immediately looked guilty. But he didn’t apologize. 

This time, when he began walking again, she walked next to him. “I didn’t get kicked out, I ran away.”

“Good for you. Leave me alone.”

“Nope, now I’m having fun annoying you.”

“Well, if you’re going to follow me all the way home, at least make yourself useful and carry some of these books. They’re heavy.” 

Without much thought she grabbed a few books off the top of his stack, muttering, “weakling.” Despite the insult, he actually smiled at her. Almost, at least. The barest hint of a grin flashed across his face. Still, seeing him smile made her feel good in a way that hero work had stopped making her feel a long while before. 

“Why’d you run away?”

“That’s none of your business.”

“It is if you don’t want me to phone the police the moment I get home.”

Anger flared through her, sudden and fast, a burning fire in her veins, and she chucked his books to the ground. Wrapping the front of his shirt in her fist, she pulled his face close to hers. He seemed startled, but not afraid. Why wasn’t he afraid? Didn’t he realize that she had even the worst of the worst villains at her feet begging for mercy within moments of her arrival?

“Call the police, and I’ll kick your ass,” she snapped. 

“Yes, well,” he pulled away from her, “you wouldn’t be the first person to do so, but I assure you, you’re the least threatening.” He fixed his shirt, redoing a button that had come loose. “Besides, if you tell me why you’ve run away, I won’t bother.”

“You’re acting like a real martyr for someone who’s what- twenty? It’s not like you’re my father. Or even one of my brothers.”

He shrugged and picked up the books that she had thrown. “Are your brothers why you ran away?”

“Sure.”

He glared. “What’s your name, anyway?”

“Are you going to keep asking questions?”

“If I feel like it. Are you going to answer any of them?”

“I’m not telling you my name.”

“Alright, then don’t. I’m Drew.” The boy awkwardly twisted one a hand away from his stack of books, which she proceeded not to shake. Instead, she continued walking the direction he’d been going before. 

“What are we walking for anyway?” She asked as he caught up with her. “Weren’t you going to take a bus?”

“First of all, we aren’t walking anywhere. I’m walking. You’re following me, not that I understand why. And second of all, the Seven-Three only comes to that stop after all other buses have completed their routes for the night.” He shot her a glance. “Have you never taken the bus before?”

“How long is it going to take to get to your place?”

His voice squeaked like a pubescent middle schooler as he shouted, “You’re not coming with me!”

“Well, why not?” Even as she said it, simply trying to see how far she could push this guy, she began to wonder what the harm would actually be. It was somewhere to go, and he seemed safe enough. Now she just needed to gather up the humility to beg for a night on his couch. 

“Because I’m not letting some random runaway brat live in my apartment with me!”

“Will you let me stay the night if I tell you my name?”

He stopped walking again, to just stare at her. “You really have nowhere to go, do you? Don’t you have any friends your own age?”

For the first time, she couldn’t make herself look into his eyes when she spoke. “Let’s just say I haven’t had many opportunities to talk to people outside my family and leave it at that.”

“That seems obvious.”

“Just answer the question, Drew, ” she snapped, turning her gaze up to glare at him. 

“Nngh…fine. But just one night! And then I want you gone!” They stared at each other, her, trying not to show the relief that she felt at having somewhere to sleep. “Well?” Drew goaded, and she remembered her end of the bargain.

Well, fair was fair. “Fine. My name is…” Her voice trailed off as she debated with herself which name to give. The public had known her strictly as ‘Shego’ since she was ten, and she was admittedly curious to see if hearing her name would make him recognize her. On the other hand, the whole reason why she ran away was to escape being Shego. She’d been fighting with her oldest brother about the use of their superhero names inside the home for weeks- the twins, almost ten now, barely even remembered that they were two distinct entities, let alone their real names! 

“My name is Shea,” she eventually mumbled. 

“Hm. Well, meeting you hasn’t exactly been pleasant. Nonetheless, I’m a man of my word. It’s going to take another hour at least to get home.”

Yikes. No wonder he’d cried about missing the bus. 

She meant to thank him, but instead what came out was, “you keep calling me a kid, but you don’t even have a car.” She began kicking herself as the words escaped her lips.

“I take it your from a wealthy family, then.” In the twenty minutes or so since she’d begun to annoy him, she hadn’t heard his voice sound so bitter. She wanted to apologize, but she’d never really learned how. Thinking back, she couldn’t recall any time she, or any other member of Team Go, has actually apologized for something. Not the blown-up buildings, not the damage they caused to civilian property, nothing. Were they really all that good, if they couldn’t even take responsibility for the things they had done?

After a long few minutes of guilt-ridden silence, filled only with the sounds of Drew’s feet shuffling as he walked, he said, “I don’t understand. If you are from a wealthy family, why on earth would you leave? I mean, it would have only taken a few more years for you to be sent off to some college somewhere, that mommy and daddy would surely pay to get you in.”

“I’ll have you know that I don’t need them to pay to get me in! And…” it was weirdly easy to open up to him, probably because he was the first person in a long time to actually ask her about herself, “and besides, my family wasn’t planning on letting me go to college.” Her voice had dropped to just above a whisper, and she kicked a pebble off the sidewalk. 

He gave her the sort of sympathetic look that she hated. “Are you from some old-school family, then?”

“You ask a lot of questions for someone who keeps claiming to find me annoying.”

“I do find you annoying.”

“Then stop asking me questions.”

“Fine!”

Thirty minutes later, her feet ached from all the walking and she was beginning to miss the Go-Car. Drew hadn’t spoken, and she wondered if he felt as weirdly un-awkward in the silence as she did. Still, the silence had given her the benefit of getting to really watch him, without him paying her much mind. 

He really was a geek. Mighty Martian comic books were interlaced between upper lever robotics and chemistry textbooks. Briefly, they reminded her of Heath, before the comet. He had been obsessed with Fearless Ferret . One of Shea’s favorite childhood memories was Halloween when she was maybe six, and he had convinced her to dress as one of the main villains from the comics. She had spent the evening saying mean things about Fearless Ferret and he couldn’t retort because it was exactly what the villain might say. Plus, she got extra candy because everyone thought the siblings wearing matching costumes were adorable. 

She hadn’t gotten to go trick-or-treating since she was eight. The twins had never even been. She almost asked Drew if he still went out on Halloween, but she couldn’t exactly start asking questions herself after yelling at him for it. 

As she continued to watch him she noticed more and more about his appearance. Like how his ears were really quite big, but for the most part, the way he styled his hair hid them. She wondered if that was deliberate. His glasses were incredibly thick, even more so than the old-bat of a nanny that had taken care of her when she was young. And she had been blind without her glasses on. He had to be utterly useless without his. 

The one thing she hated noticing as they walked, was the fact that she found him… gah, she actually found him cute. Not like, model or famous actor attractive, but he had a genuine sort of natural cuteness about him. She couldn’t even place why she thought it. Maybe because he was the first person in six years that wasn’t one of her brothers, or someone trying to kill her who actually acted like she was a real person. He hadn’t even commented on the fact that she was green, although she figured that might be because in the dim lighting she just looked pale. He was pale, and she wondered when the last time he saw the light of day was. 

She’d never had a crush before, and she couldn’t be sure if this was one, or if she just vaguely liked the way he looked. She did know one thing for sure. Every time he yawned it both made her want to break his jaw and made her find him even more adorable. 

Unusual to her typically stubborn self, Shea broke the silence at the end of the half-hour. “How much further?” She asked, in what must have been the whiniest voice she’d ever used. He jumped, seemingly startled by her speaking. “I’m tired.”

“Crybaby,” he snapped, throwing her earlier insult back at her. 

“C’mon, just tell me how much further!”

“Twenty-” he interrupted himself with a yawn, “twenty minutes. Now quit whining.”

“Oh please, there’s no way half of those yawns haven’t been for attention.”

“I’m tired too, you know!”

She nudged his arm with her own. “Crybaby.” She saw his eyes roll, behind his glasses, but she thought he didn’t look all that annoyed. After another few minutes of silence, she asked a question of her own. “Why are you actually letting me stay with you? You’re clearly not afraid of me.” Even as she wished he would find her threatening, she was glad he didn’t. “And you’re not doing it because you like me or anything, so what’s the deal?”

She saw his eyebrow raise a bit. “Why would I be afraid of you? Because you threatened me?”

“I guess.” 

“You’re not exactly frightening, even compared to other kids.”

“Then why are you letting me stay with you?”

“I guess cause I’m not going to leave some kid alone in the middle of the night around here,” he said with a shrug. “Besides how much harm can one night do?”

“I mean, most murders happen in just one night.”

He glanced at her. “You know, I still don’t have to actually let you stay.”

“I didn’t say I was gonna murder you. I mean, most babies are born in one night too. Most life-changing events happen in a short time.” Like a strange glowing comet, striking a treehouse and turning the kids inside into freaks, she thought. 

“I suppose that’s true.” 

“Do you have roommates?”

“No.” His voice had gone bitter and dark again. “I was meant to, but he bailed on me.”

“So, you’ve got an empty room?”

“Until I can find a new roommate.” Before she could suggest herself, he added. “One actually old enough to pay rent.”

The seventeen cents in her back pocket seemed heavy, all of a sudden, stopping her from trying to protest. “Whatever you say, poindexter.”

“Don’t call me that.”

“It’s not my fault you’re dressed like a geek. I mean- Mighty Martian? Really? The only thing that would be dorkier is if you’re a fan of Fearless Ferret too.”

“Well, I’m not, if that pleases you to know. Not that it should matter.”

“Still. Mighty Martian ?”

“Well, what do you like? Aside from being a pest?”

Shea realized, not that she hadn’t really known before, that she had no way of answering that. She didn’t really get to go out or hang out with people her own age. She read a lot of books, but she couldn’t just say that after making fun of him for being a nerd. Well, she didn’t read a whole lot of science fiction or fantasy, but even reading the classics was too nerdy to say now. What else did she do?

Finally, she settled on saying, “I’m a martial artist.” It wasn’t a lie, exactly. She did know martial arts. A number of different styles, but she wasn’t going to tell him she had superpowers that made fighting a lot easier. 

“Aren’t martial artists meant to have discipline and self-control?”

She shrugged, trying not to show that she was actually a bit offended. “I have ‘em. Just choosing not to use ‘em right now.”

“Yes, I’ve noticed. That building there,” he paused, pointing up and ahead of them, “is where my apartment is.”

It looked miles away, and yet deliciously close. She just wanted to lie down, although she was starting to wonder if anyone had even noticed she was gone. She was miles from home, about to go sleep in some random college kids' apartment. For all she knew, he was a serial killer. Or worse. And yet, maybe nobody cared enough to think about the danger she could be in. 

“I want food,” Shea said, mostly as a way of interrupting her spiraling thoughts. Though once she said it she realized she could eat.

“That isn’t my problem.”

“Can’t we go in there?” She pointed off to her left, at a brightly lit up 24-hour diner. 

Drew pulled a face, as soon as he saw where she was asking to go. “Oh, certainly, if you’d like to spend twenty dollars on undercooked chicken, or molding pancakes. I’m not eating there.”

“Well, where can we eat?”

“Do you have money?”

“I mean… not really.”

“Then you can go a night without eating! I barely have enough to feed myself, let alone you.”

She wanted to be angry with him, she really did, but even so, she couldn’t be. She knew that wasn’t his fault. “At least I’m not just some runaway brat anymore.”

“Oh don’t worry, you still are.” After Shea didn’t respond he sighed and they lapsed back into an oddly not uncomfortable silence for the remainder of their walk.

Chapter Text

The apartment building itself smelled like mildew and microwaved fish, and Shea couldn’t help but flinch when the smell hit her. Only one overhead light brightened up the entrance and it flickered enough to be headache-inducing. The man working at the desk, an older guy wearing an oversized cross on a gold chain, looked like he hadn’t showered even once since the invention of running water. He looked her up and down, then winked in Drew’s direction. 

“Feel like sharing, Lipsky?” He asked. His voice sounded like someone with a permanent cold trying to speak by submerging their head in water. Shea hated everything about him instantaneously. 

If it weren’t for the fact that she didn’t want Drew to freak out and decide she couldn’t actually stay the night, she would have plasma blasted the slimeball out of the building. And, to be honest, because of the fact that Drew’s only response was to look appalled, and immediately, though subtly enough that anyone else might have missed it, move to put himself between her and the creep. 

Despite her assumption that Drew knew less about real fighting than a toddler at a ninja-themed birthday party, Shea had never felt so protected. Her brothers knew as well as she did that she could handle herself against the worst of the worst, and they never bothered to stand up for her anymore. 

Once, when she was twelve or thirteen, a local news anchor commented to her, on live television, that like most other men, he was counting down the days until she turned eighteen. Her brothers, though they later claimed to be discomforted by his words, said nothing. 

Heath's only contribution was to reprimand her afterward for storming off and leaving scorch marks on the wall backstage. Merrick whined for the rest of the day about how she had gotten all the attention when the broadcast should have focused on the way he’d taken down the villain of the week. Wendell and Westley, she forgave because they were too young to understand what the implications had been, but it was still annoying when they cried all evening about not getting to eat the candy that had been left out for them to have after the interview, even after Shea had snuck them both candy bars from her hidden collection. 

It felt kind of nice, in a simultaneously uncomfortable way, to have someone act protective over her. It seemed as though he were a momentary barrier between her and all of her past troubles. He felt like a personified version of… oh.  She knew then, more like an unspoken instinct than a conscious realization, that she and Drew would, somehow or another, become much closer than some runaway brat and the college student who wanted her gone by the next morning. Everything about Drew screamed out home in a way that home hadn’t for years. The way he placed himself in harm's way for her, the way the lapses of silence seemed natural rather awkward, even the way they had bickered the whole walk screamed of home to her, of safety and warmth and something else she couldn’t quite place. Love crossed her mind before being quickly dismissed. Acceptance. That was it. 

Still standing between her and slimeball, he began to usher her up the steps. After all the walking they had done, they still had to climb six flights of stairs. 

Somewhere between the fourth and fifth flight, Shea finally looked down at Drew who trailed just a few steps below her. “Hasn’t this place ever heard of elevators?” 

“Just keep walking,” he grumbled, his eyes focused on the stairs like he’d miss a step if he looked up. Never one to like being bossed around, she immediately stopped to glare at him. 

A moment later, Drew crashed right into her. She kept her balance easy enough but worried he might actually go falling backwards down the steps. She grabbed his shoulder to steady him without thinking. Was that a hero thing? Or just something normal people did? She hated that she could no longer tell the difference, and hated the idea of having to question her every choice even more. 

Once he seemed stable enough she snapped her hand back. “Watch your step, poindexter,” she warned, hoping he understood the double meaning behind her words. 

“Nngh- stop calling me that ,” he snapped, sending her a glare of his own. He stormed past her, leaving her to actually have to run up a number of steps to catch him. By the time she did, he was in the process of shoving open the door to the sixth-floor hallway. He didn’t hold it for her the way he had when they first entered the building, and she rushed to catch it before it shut and locked her out. She had a feeling, even as angry as he seemed to be, he would have come back to let her in. Eventually. 

The silence had officially become awkward as he unlocked the door to his apartment. The keys kept sticking, and it took him three tries to get the door open. When it finally swung open he, once again, didn’t hold it for her. She inched inside before the door could swing shut.

The apartment was, as expected, not very spacious, though it was pleasantly, if sparsely decorated. A navy blue sofa and matching loveseat were angled towards a tv stand. Though the television itself looked old, his collection of VHS tapes could rival her own. For the first time since she slipped away earlier that day, she actually missed Go Tower. Her quick scan of the movies showed a ton of nostalgic children’s movies, every sort of sci-fi and fantasy out there, and every season of Mighty Martian , but not one good horror movie. Well, no horror movies at all, good or bad. 

She considered commenting, but when she glanced over at him the anger still radiating off of him slapped her in the face. He had his back turned to her, and for a moment she watched him as he dropped all of his books on the counter that marked the end of the living room and the start of the kitchen. He still didn’t look at her, as he rounded the corner and threw open one of the cabinets. Hunger twisted at her stomach, making her remember with near painful clarity that she hadn’t eaten anything since noon. 

She trailed into the kitchen behind him, putting the books she had been carrying in a neat stack beside the ones he’d thrown everywhere. She leaned against the counter and asked, “So. Um. Is Lipsky your last name?” trying to alleviate some of the tension. 

He glanced at her over his shoulder, then turned back again. She continued to watch him as he pulled bread and peanut butter from the pantry and barely stopped herself from grabbing him when he brushed past her to get to the fridge. 

She fidgeted with the hem of her t-shirt, green like most everything else she owned. After what felt like hours of internal debate, but had actually only been long enough for Drew to start slathering peanut butter onto a slice of bread, she decided she should probably apologize if she wanted to try asking him for food again.

He had just finished making the sandwich when she mustered up the courage to mutter, “I- um. Sorry.” He glanced at her, sighed, then looked away again to cut the sandwich in half. He took a bite out of one half, holding the other half out towards her. She snatched it from his hands, worried he’d change his mind. He gave her a startled look. 

“Your room-for the night- is through that door,” he said, jerking his thumb behind him. “Um. The sheets on the bed should be clean, I think I changed them a few days ago.” He shrugged and added, “if they’re not there’s extra in the closet in the hall.” 

“You’re like a mom,” she blurted, her mouth still sticky with peanut butter. Only after the words were out of her mouth did she realize what she said. She felt her face heat up knowing that if he somehow hadn’t noticed the green skin before he would definitely notice now. 

His eyes went wide, and jam spilled down the crust of his half of the sandwich as he squeezed it too tightly. “I… I’ll ignore that if you tell me why your skin is green.”

“Would you believe me if I said I ate too much broccoli as a kid?” She asked. He stared at her, which she took to mean he would not. “I didn’t mean it as an insult, you know.” Every bone in her body begged him to just let it slide. 

“You realize you’re eating my food in my apartment, right? The least you could do is tell me that you’re not carrying some deadly virus I don’t know about!”

“Well, I’m not,” she snapped. “My skins just green, okay? It’s not deadly! It doesn’t come off! And it’s not contagious!” He took a step away from her as she began yelling, and she forced herself to calm down. She didn’t want him to be afraid of her, despite her earlier attempt at threatening him. She’d actually started to like the guy and she didn’t want to completely ruin her one sort-of chance at having a friend. 

She hoped he wouldn’t notice her looking at her hands to make sure they hadn’t caught fire. They hadn’t, which gave her the barest hint of relief. 

Right as she considered that she might have to apologize for scaring him he asked, “Are your brothers green too?” He didn’t seem all that scared to her anymore, which, gah, he annoyed her just as much when he wasn’t scared as he did when he was. What was it about him?

“No.” She jumped up to sit on the counter, letting her legs dangle over the side. “But they’re not… I don’t know, normal, either.”

“Is it a genetic thing?”

“Not exactly.”

“What makes your brothers abnormal?”

“I think every question I answer should get me an extra night. This is personal stuff, Drew.”

He hesitated, then his startled look turned into a smirk. “Counteroffer, five questions get one free night.”

She finished the last bite of her sandwich and crossed her arms. She loved nothing more than a challenge. “One big question or three little ones gets a free night.”

“No. There’s no way I could know for sure which questions are big and which are little. Five questions for a free night. But you can pick and choose what to answer.”

“Three questions but I still get to choose what I answer.”

“Five questions and I’ll throw in one free meal a day.” 

“Three questions for a free night, two more gets the meal.”

Drew stayed silent for a long moment, staring at her. And then he stuck out his hand. “Deal.”

She slapped her hand into his and shook on it. His hand was sticky with the jam that had spilled earlier. Though she elected not to say anything about it he seemed to realize as they pulled away. 

“Sorry,” he muttered and passed her a dampened paper towel. She shrugged off his apology and wiped her hands clean. “So. What is supposedly so abnormal about your brothers?”

She sighed and tossed the paper towel over his head into the trash can behind him. “My oldest brother is kinda blue. Not that most people can really tell. They can tell his hair is blue, though.” She paused. 

Drew did exactly what she hoped he would do. “What about the other?”

“That counts as two questions!” Her grin widened as she took in his glare. 

He crossed his arms and yawned. “Fine. Just answer it. And then I want to go to bed.”

“He’s purple. Like really purple. His skin, his hair, even his eyes. Also, I have two other brothers.”

“I suppose I might as well ask what’s abnormal about them, and just let you stay tomorrow night as well,” Drew sighed. 

Hesitant as she’d been to answer his questions at first, she found herself enjoying talking about it. At least he didn’t know to ask about her powers. 

“They’re twins, Wendell and Westley.” Of her brothers, they were the only ones she still liked and the only ones she worried about missing. “Their hair and eyes are red. Not ginger red, but more like that little drop of blood after getting your finger pricked.” 

“Lovely. I imagine almost every word of that was a lie, but nonetheless, I suppose you can stay tomorrow as well. Cups are here,” he knocked on a cabinet above the dishwasher. “Use the filtered water in the fridge. And… well. Don’t drink my cocoa moo.”

“I’m not ly- wait… Cocoa…moo?”

“Yes. It’s mine. You can’t have any.”

“What exactly is cocoa moo?”

“Nngh! It’s chocolate milk.”

“Why do you-”

“Because I do, alright?”

“Whatever.”

Drew ran his hand through his hair, yawning once more. “I’m going to bed now. Your door locks but only turn the lock halfway if you plan on locking it. Otherwise, it’ll stick and we’ll have to call someone to get it open.”

“Okay. Um… thanks, by the way.” 

“Sure. Just. You know.” Drew shrugged, but she saw the blush that spread evenly across his cheeks. “And yeah. Um. Lipsky is my last name.”

And then he turned on his heel, locked the front door, and disappeared down the hall into what she assumed must be his room. Shea stayed on the counter, staring at the second hand of the clock as it tick-tick-ticked. It seemed unreal. 

In a weird way, Drew Lipsky’s apartment reminded her a lot of home, before the comet. They hadn’t been a rich family at all, back then. Heath and Merrick shared a room that had barely fit their bunk beds, let alone Heath’s desk and Merricks toy box. Sitting on Drew’s counter now, she imagined she could still hear them fighting over who got to sleep on the top bunk that night. Heath almost always came out victorious, until Merrick went screaming and sobbing to their mother. 

Shea had shared a room with the twins, for the first couple years of their lives. Her dad built her a lofted bed before they were born. The crib, which had been built to split into two as soon as the twins were old enough, fit neatly underneath. The babies would have been put to bed an hour before her own bedtime, and she learned quickly to sneak in silence up the ladder to her bed if she didn’t wish to wake them up. She’d get a silent half-hour, reading from a pile of books next to her pillow by the dim glow of a flashlight. Most nights Heath and Merricks fighting would wake the twins. More than once their cries had interrupted her in the middle of the best part of her story, in which case she’d climb back off her bed, and make the older boys fight worse than it had been, adding her own screams and wild punches into the mix. 

Those nights her mother would come in, long before Merrick had the chance to lose the fight, and decide who slept where. Then, she’d take Shea downstairs, pour her a glass of chocolate milk, and they would stay up late, curled up together on the couch, both reading their books.

That was back when her father was just a carpenter, and her mother was just a teacher and they were just normal children. 

Shea glanced over to the fridge, the temptation to pour herself a glass of chocolate milk was strong, despite Drew’s earlier warning. He was already letting her stay with him, despite her being able to contribute nothing except some half-answers to his questions, which he didn’t believe anyway. And already today she had done one thing that he had made a point of telling her not to do. She swung her legs out and leapt off the counter. 

“Maybe some other time,” she said in the direction of the fridge, feeling ridiculous even as she did. Still, hero or normal person, she thought following Lipsky’s basic rule was in general the better idea. “Thanks again, Drew,” she whispered, glancing down the hall towards his door. It was easier to say when she wasn’t looking at him. 

Her bedroom, or rather her bedroom for the next two nights, held nothing but a double bed. The blank white walls begged to be painted, covered in posters, anything to stop the room from looking like a hospital room. Even the thought made her sick. She’d spent far too much time in hospitals after the comet struck to be comfortable with them. 

Any notion she’d felt that she was meant to meet Drew strengthened ten-fold when she looked at the bed. As if he’d known she would be the one sleeping in the bed, he had covered it in green sheets, a dark black blanket folded neatly at the bottom. The sheets themselves were soft beneath her fingertips, and the clean lavender scent that wafted off them made her feel incredibly grimy in comparison. She almost wanted to take a shower, before climbing in, but the pillows looked so inviting. 

With a contented sigh, she closed the door behind her, slipped out of her jeans, leaving her t-shirt on and crawled into the bed. She left the door unlocked.

Chapter Text

On any given night Shea lay in bed for hours before falling asleep. Somehow she fell asleep before her head even touched the pillow in the spare bed in Lipsky’s apartment. She dreamt of swirling colors, green, black, blue mingled with odd flashes of orange, but by the time she woke up the next morning she remembered none of it. 

She woke to the sound of creaky cabinets opening and closing, and pots and pans clinking together. A slim beam of sunlight shone through the cracks in the blinds. She lay in bed waiting for a sense of panic to settle in, for her brain to start wondering where she was or why she wasn’t inside Go Tower. It never happened. She felt warm, in a cozy sort of way, and the noise from the kitchen seemed familiar and comforting. 

Never one to just lie in bed for hours after waking up, not that she’d had much choice in the matter, Shea stood, pulled her grimy jeans back on, and slipped out into the kitchen. 

Drew seemed not to hear her and she watched him in silence, stifling a yawn. He hadn’t combed his hair yet and it stuck up in odd places, loose curls forming at the nape of his neck. The way he moved reminded her of someone waiting to start dancing, despite the lack of music. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other, reached for a spatula with a snappy movement of his wrist, drumming his fingers on the counter as he did. 

He wore dark jeans that hung loosely off his waist, secured by navy blue suspenders with white polka dots. In contrast, the white button-up shirt he wore was clearly too small on him, she could see every muscle in his shoulders and back flexing as he moved around. Shea blinked at him a few times. He both looked cuter, and far geekier than the previous night. 

Without a word Shea walked the rest of the way into the kitchen, popping up to sit on the counter again. Drew yelped and jumped away from her, throwing his arms up to cover his head. 

“Sh-ngh- don’t do that,” he shouted at her. Breathing heavily, he dropped his arms back to his sides still staring at her. 

She blinked at him, a little startled by his initial scream, but otherwise unfazed. “Jeez. Sor- ry , scaredy-cat.” His hair looked even more sticky-uppy in the front. 

“Oh, yes. You seem so apologetic.” He rolled his eyes and stomped back to his place in front of the stove. Scrambled eggs were cooking in one pan, bacon in the other. It looked delicious and her mouth started watering as she watched him cook. 

Shea shrugged. “At least I said sorry. It’s not my fault you got scared.”

He turned his head to glare at her, taking the eggs off the stove. He shoveled them onto two separate plates, on the counter opposite her. He switched the spatula out for a set of tongs, checked the bacon and then placed two pieces on both plates. 

He leaned against the other counter, watching her, and lifted up one of the plates. She held a hand out, expecting him to pass the plate to her. Instead, he shook his head and took a bite of the eggs. 

“No way. You still have to answer two questions if you want a meal,” he said, after swallowing. A vague hint of a smirk took over his face. 

“Well then what’d you bother making two plates for?” she snapped. His smirk pissed her off, despite the fact that they had agreed on two questions for a meal just a few hours before.  “I’m done answering questions.” 

“Then I’m not going to ask any,” he said. He plucked a piece of bacon off what should have been her plate and bit into it. 

“Hey!” Shea protested. She felt the heat, both from him pissing her off and from her own embarrassment start coursing through her veins. She had to make a very real effort to calm down before plasma started to shoot out of her hands. She hid her hands behind her back in fists, as her fingertips burst into green flame. “Ugh,” she finally muttered, giving up as the fire died. “Fine.”

“What’s your last name?”

“Pick a different question.”

“Fine. Why don’t you want me to know your last name?”

“Not answering that either.”

Drew pushed his glasses up with the back of his hand. “You must not be very hungry.”

“Just ask something else, okay? I’m not answering questions like that!”

“Fine! When you decided to run away, where did you plan on going?”

“I didn’t. Mostly I just went to all the addresses listed in roommate wanted ads, but none of them worked out.”

“Okay. Um. Oh! How old are you, actually?”

“Sixteen. Gimme.” She held her hand out again, and this time he picked her plate up and passed it over. He’d swapped one of his pieces of bacon with the one from her plate that he’d bitten, leaving her two full pieces. She took a huge bite of the eggs, pleasantly surprised to find that they were even more delicious than they looked. “How old are you ?” Shea asked around a mouthful of food.

“Twenty-one. Are you planning on returning home anytime soon?” 

“I already answered your two questions.”

“Well, you’ve also already got another night to stay here, so I figure two more and you could have lunch too.”

“Don’t you have a job or- or school or something?”

“It’s Saturday. No class. And I do have a job, but it’s on campus so I also don’t work on weekends.”

“What kind of job?”

“I’m a TA.”

“A what?”

“Teachers assistant. I give exams, help grade essays and tutor students who need extra help. Are you planning on going home? Ever?

“Cool. And… no.”

“Why’d you leave?”

“I’m still not answering that.”

“Aw c’mon, please!” His lower lip jutted out as his eyes went wide with a false sort of innocence.

“No! No way!” When he only responded by sticking his lip out further, she leaned forward, grabbed a hold of one side of his suspenders, pulled them back and then let them snap back against his chest.

“Ow!” He squawked, scrambling away from her to press himself against the other counter.  “That hurt!”

“Yeah, kinda the point. The puppy dog look doesn’t suit you.”

“Hmph. Says you.” 

“Why do you care so much about why I left, anyway?”

“I don’t care, I’m just a naturally curious individual.”

Shea scoffed. “Yeah right.”

Drew’s face flushed bright red, and he dumped his empty plate into the sink. “I’ve got tests to grade, anyway,” he mumbled, and walked back into his room.

Shea stared after him. Sitting alone in the kitchen during the day seemed much more strange than it had in the middle of the night. It no longer reminded her of her childhood home. It was much too quiet for that now that the sun was up. There had always been so much noise: Dad’s tools buzzing away in the garage, Mom practicing her lesson plans before class, Fearless Ferret playing on the TV, Merrick making a fool out of himself with whatever new plot to get attention he’d come up with, Wendell and Westley’s baby babble and toddling footsteps. It drove her crazy back then. She’d give just about anything to get it back now. 

The Go Tower dwarfed their old home, and though sound constantly echoed down the cavernous hallways, it wasn’t the same. Instead of babble between Wendell and Westley, she heard more and more voices emanating from their training room as they pushed the limits of how many clones of themselves they could make, testing themselves to the point of exhaustion. Instead of Merrick poorly performing magic tricks at the breakfast table, she heard him laugh after scaring the staff by shrinking down and returning to normal before they spotted him. Instead of Fearless Ferret, she heard weights clinking together as Heath pushed himself to become stronger and stronger. Instead of lesson plans, she heard her mother writing out training schedules. Instead of buzzing tools, she heard her father on the phone with government agencies seeking the help of Team Go making deals and discussing payment. 

Though having her own bedroom started out nice, it grew lonely fast. The space was far too large for just one person. Like each of her brothers, except for the twins who insisted upon sharing everything since even their powers were identical, her bedroom in Go Tower was closer to being its own house, particularly because it consisted of several rooms. She had her own bathroom, bigger than both bathrooms in their old home combined. She had an entire gym in one room that held a treadmill, weights, punching bags, yoga mats, and various other general exercise equipment, almost all of which she was expected to use every day. Attached to the gym was her power-focused training room which held large cement blocks for her to explode with plasmablasts, a wall made of cement, painted with targets for her to practice her aim, scraps of metal for her to practice temperature control and, of course, a number of fire extinguishers. She also had a study area, with state of the art home-school textbooks on every subject imaginable, a large TV screen with video connection to various tutors around the world, and a little robot that was meant to quiz her, but it often malfunctioned and repeated the same question over and over, no matter the subject she chose. The actual bedroom itself held a king size bed that made her feel the way she though drowning might feel.

Actually, when she thought about it, her bedroom reminded her of Drew’s whole apartment. She also had a sofa and loveseat, though they were green, that faced a television screen, though hers was far nicer and was surrounded by what must be every horror movie ever made. She had a large table in one corner, that mostly consisted of drawings of different battle plans. The only things she really liked about her room, were the bookshelves that reached from floor to ceiling. The whole room looked like a library. She even had a reading nook and fireplace. Really, the whole thing was absurd. Her closet was bigger than Drew’s guest room, despite the fact that she alternated between her uniform and gym clothes most days of the week. 

Unable to handle sitting still doing nothing after so many years of nonstop movement except for sleeping, Shea leaped off the counter. Part of her wanted to go knock on Drew’s door, but she didn’t know what she’d say to him. Plus, she didn’t want to look desperate for his attention. After all, she was only meant to be there for one more night and for all she knew he was planning on calling the police about finding a runaway. 

She dumped her plate into the sink next to his and wandered off to find the bathroom. It wasn’t particularly hard to find, given that there were only two doors she hadn’t seen opened. She opened the first to find the linen closet Drew had mentioned the night before, so it came as no surprise that the second led to the actual bathroom. 

The bright red shower curtain stuck to the side of the bathtub, but it didn’t look at all grimy. Shea peeled it back, and saw that the bottom of the tub was lined with a clear adhesive, decorated with multi-colored robots, aliens and rocket ships. What a dork. And who used blueberry-ash shampoo? Curious, she picked up the bottle and opened the top. It did smell kind of fruity with a weird fiery after smell. She couldn’t decide if she liked it or not. His body wash, some sort of off brand thing, she did like. It’s label simply read ‘Body Wash For Men’ and it smelled kind of like water, but it had a sort of a woodsy undertone that made her think of leaves changing color in the fall—something she’d rarely seen since her parents purchased Go City. 

As she moved to turn the water on, she realized she probably should ask before just using his shower, especially since she’d need to use his shampoo and body wash. She decided that bothering him because she was bored was entirely different from bothering him because she needed something, and after standing outside his door for an awkwardly long time, she knocked. 

The door swung open a moment later. “What?” Peering around the corner she could see him hunched over a desk tucked nearly into the corner of the room; he must have reached behind him to open the door. He’d flattened his hair, but only a little. He didn’t turn to look at her. 

“Can- um- can I use your shower?”

Drew’s pen finally stopped moving on the paper as he uttered a quiet, “oh.” He turned around and blinked at her before properly answering. “Right, yes. Of course. Um. Here.” He stood up and shuffled past her out into the hallway. She stood behind him, feeling more and more like the little kid he claimed she was, waiting as he opened up the linen closet. He passed her a faded blue towel, that smelled of the same lavender laundry detergent as the sheets on her bed. “I- do you want a clean shirt? I probably have something I could give you.”

“Oh, yeah, that’d be… nice, I guess.” She liked annoying him more. Being polite felt awkward. 

“I’ll leave something by the door, then?”

“Okay,” she said, forcing a shrug. “Thanks.” She hurried into the bathroom. 

The shower felt like absolute bliss. The water ran lukewarm at best, the pressure varied between barely dripping and hard enough to hurt, and she still couldn’t decide if she liked the way the shampoo smelled. But it felt so nice to feel clean that she hardly noticed all of that. 

The mirror hadn’t even steamed up by the time she got out. She realized as she looked in the mirror that she’d been an absolute disaster before. She still looked like a mess and a half. She hadn't even realized that there were yellow-blue bruises lining her chin, presumably from her most recent fight. Briefly, she wondered if the real reason Drew wanted to know who she was so bad was because he thought she was being abused. There were other bruises, on her shoulders and her thighs that she had actually known were there. 

The one on her left shoulder, a nasty looking thing, came from being thrown clear across a giant room and slamming into the wall. At first, she’d genuinely believed her shoulder had been dislocated. Most of the ones on her thighs came from a guy who called himself ‘The Hunter’. He shot her with a number of darts while she’d been dealing with another villain. Hego lectured her the entire time they were in the Go-Car for going too hard on him once she caught him. He didn’t care at all that his goal had been to kill her, or that the only reason she was still alive was because her plasma burned up the poison. 

Annoyed, Shea tried combing through her hair with her fingers. It didn’t work very well, and upon not finding a brush anywhere in the bathroom she debated between chopping it all off and just sucking it up and asking if he had a comb. For the moment she just gave up. She wrapped the towel tight around herself and listened at the door for a long moment, trying to make sure she couldn’t hear him outside. When she felt sure, she opened the door a crack and snatched up the clothes he’d left on the floor. 

He’d brought her a shirt, as he said he would, but surprisingly he’d also brought a pair of gym shorts. She felt gross putting on the same underwear she’d been wearing, even after turning them inside out, but she did what she had to. She really should have thought this whole running away thing through more, she told herself, she didn’t even have money to actually get clean underwear. Still, sliding into otherwise clean clothes felt nice in a way she wasn’t used to. 

The gym shorts were a little loose and hung at an awkward height, but ultimately they stayed up well enough after she tied the strings as tight as possible. The t-shirt actually fit quite nicely, if a little long. She suspected that he’d given her a Mighty Martian shirt, just to spite her. 

When she left the bathroom he had moved out onto the couch, red-marked papers scattered around him on the cushions and coffee table. 

He spoke without even turning to look at her. “I’m sorry if they don’t fit quite right. It’s all I had on hand.”

“Fits fine,” she said and sat down on the spare chair. “You’ve got pen all over your arms you know. And on your face.”

He acknowledged her with a grunt, one of his shoulders moving up in half a shrug. 

“What are you grading anyway?”

“Chemistry exams.”

“Didn’t classes just start like a week ago? Why are they taking exams already?”

He squeezed his eyes shut, rubbing at his temples. Was she annoying him that much? “These are finals from the summer course.”

“Oh.”

After a minute of restless fidgeting, Shea grabbed one of the exams that had already been graded and looked over it. She understood exactly none of it. Aside from not knowing anything about chemistry the guy had terrible handwriting, although he seemed to have gotten himself a decent enough grade. 

“You spelled ‘calorimetry’ wrong,” she pointed out, reading through the notes he had scrawled throughout the paper. 

“How would you know?” 

“Because the question on the front spelled it differently from how you spelled it. You spelled it like ‘cal-om-ir-etry’.”

Drew snatched the paper from her hands, holding it practically up to his nose as he searched for his mistake. “Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me,” he moaned, as he saw she was right. He slammed the test down on the coffee table and hunched over it, roughly scratching the word out. She heard him spelling the word under his breath like a chant, though he didn’t touch the pen to the paper. 

“You just mixed up the letters, it really isn’t that big a deal.”

“Nygh- yes it is ,” he snapped at her, throwing the pen to the coffee table and burying his face in his hands, which pushed his glasses up awkwardly into his hair. 

She really hoped he wouldn’t start crying again, she didn’t know how to deal with that. Acting on some semblance of instinct she snatched the paper back, picked up his discarded pen and wrote the word properly underneath where he’d scratched it out. 

“There. Problem solved.” She pushed the paper back towards him and suppressed the temptation to throw the pen at his head. He pulled his hands away from his face and yanked his glasses back down to look at the paper. 

He seemed to read her writing multiple times before confirming that she had actually spelled it correctly. He opened and shut his mouth several times and Shea couldn’t decide if he looked grateful or annoyed. 

“Thanks,” he finally grunted, his voice softer than she’d heard it. When they made eye contact his entire face flushed and he quickly looked back down. 

“You know, you could’ve easily done that yourself. So what’s the deal?” 

He shook his head slowly and didn’t answer. 

Shea crossed her arms and leaned back in the chair. “I’m not gonna quit bugging you until you tell me what your deal is.”

“You’re not going to quit bugging me anyway,” he pointed out. “And it’s none of your business, alright?”

“Nah. I wanna know.”

“What’s your last name?”

Any amusement she felt vanished instantly. “Okay, fine. Just shut up about that.”

“That’s what I thought.”

“You know, your shampoo smells really weird.”

“You know, I really don’t care what you think about it. I’m sure you’ve got plenty of fancy shampoo back home. ” He glared at her, but even as he said he started to look like he felt bad about it. 

“I’d rather weird-smelling shampoo to going back there,” she muttered, and this time it was her turn to look away when he looked at her. She shifted her hands behind her back. It had been too long since she’d burned off enough of the plasma energy, and she could feel how even the slightest hint of distress or annoyance was pushing her closer and closer to a full-on fire forming in her hands. 

She shot off the chair, and stomped back into the room. She remembered not to lock the door just as she began to do so. Instead, she pressed her back to the door, held her hands out in front of her and finally let them light up. The whole room glowed green around her, brighter than she’d seen since the comet hit. 

When she was twelve she had tried to burn up all of the plasma in her body, thinking maybe if she could her parents would go back to treating her like Shea instead of like Shego. She’d let her hands burn and burn, until, eventually, she began throwing up, became blindingly dizzy and passed out on the cold hard floor of her training room. The worst part was that when she finally woke up she was still completely alone in her training room. She’d never tried it again. For days afterwards using her powers at all brought her close to tears, the skin around her hands had burned and blistered so horribly. Around about a month later the burns turned back in callouses, and she’d never tried again. 

Burning her hands in the spare bedroom felt a lot like that. Part of her wanted to just burn and burn until she absolutely couldn’t anymore. She hated feeling all these emotions again. For the last four years, she had mostly just forced herself to forget that she had ever had a life outside of ‘Shego’. She trained, and fought, and studied and felt nothing. 

And this, this… geek kept making her feel… He just kept making her feel. She felt guilty when he seemed upset, he actually made her laugh, made her feel protected, he annoyed her in a way that she also found endearing, and… She didn’t even know. He made her feel so many different ways, sometimes all at once. She no longer knew whether she liked that better than feeling constantly apathetic.

When her veins finally began to run cold, she stopped and collapsed to her knees with her head buried in her hands. She wanted to feel normal again and none of this helped. No matter what she did she wasn’t going to get Hego to be Heath again or get Mego to go back to being Merrick. Wego might never realize they were two people; that their names had once been Wendell and Westley. Mom and Dad were never going to be Mom and Dad again. Were they even looking for her as Shea? As their daughter? Or were they looking for Shego? 

She hated all of this so much. She hated it. She didn’t know the guy sitting behind the door, and she hated that he was the first person she’d felt anything other than dutiful apathy towards. She hated him for trying to get her to open up more and then hated herself for hating him. She hated that the clothes she wore belonged to a stranger, and she hated feeling like they could never be friends because she could never tell him the truth about who she was. 

Suddenly she found herself standing up. She pushed open the door, and practically marched over to Drew.

Chapter Text

“I need to show you something,” Shea said, standing in front of Drew who seemed not to notice her until she spoke, “and you have to promise not to freak out. Or tell anyone.”

“I-uh-I- What?” He stammered, glancing up at her with the same sort of nervous, trapped look the villain of the week gave her when she caught them instead of her brothers. He cleared his throat, trying to force a calm look to his face. “What do you mean?”

“Just promise,” she urged him. Ideally, before she lost her courage.

He put the pen down and held up his hands. “Alright, alright, I promise.”

She squeezed her eyes shut, and held her hands out in front of her. “Just- don’t freak out,” she muttered again, and then she lit her hands on fire.

She expected him to scream, or gasp, or… or something, but she heard nothing. Finally, she opened her eyes. He sat there staring dumbly at her hands, his eyes wide. 

“How are you doing that?” He asked, after a painfully long moment. She let the flames die, and he looked up at her face. “How did you do that?”

 She’d expected him to be scared, not intrigued. She’d expected to have to try and calm him down. “It’s, well, it’s a long story.” Drew reached forward and flipped over the test he’d been grading, and gestured for her to continue. She sighed, ran a hand through her hair and sat down. 

“When I was eight,” she began, “my treehouse, well, technically my oldest brothers but we all used it, anyway… Um. Yeah, so, we were up in the treehouse after school one day and one minute we were all arguing over whether we wanted to ask mom to make pasta for dinner or if we wanted pizza, and then the next minute I was waking up in the hospital.” She continued on to tell him, stammering and rewording her sentences constantly, the story of how the treehouse was struck by a radioactive comet, and they all woke up again having gained superpowers. She didn’t go into how their parents forced the hero lifestyle on them, or how they spent nearly two years holed up in various hospitals being tested and trained like lab rats. “My brothers all have a pretty good handle on their powers, but then, theirs can’t really do the damage that mine can. I mean, I’ve got a good handle on mine too, just sometimes… My point is I guess I figured you should know since you let me stay here and everything.”

Drew remained silent for a long enough time that she very nearly slapped him, just to get him to react somehow. Slowly, he nodded. “Can you do it again?” He asked, his face splitting into a grin, like a small child. 

“Wha- seriously?” His head bobbed up and down in an overly enthusiastic nod. “Ugh, fine.” She held out her right hand and lit it. 

“If I touch your hand now, it’ll burn me?” 

“I feel like that’s obvious.”

“But it’s not burning you?”

Shea shrugged. “My hands calloused over years ago. And even if they hadn’t it does take a lot to burn me now.”

“Fascinating. What if I touched your wrist, or something else not burning?”

“Then you won’t burn. You can get as close as you want without touching, heat doesn’t really radiate out of the plasma.” Drew reached forward before she’d even finished speaking, and grabbed a hold of her wrist. “Be careful!” Shea protested. “The burn will seriously suck if you do get hit.” 

“Is it just your hands?”

“What?”

“I mean,” he let go of her wrist and her hand stopped burning, “does anything else catch fire? Or is it just your hands? Can you breathe fire?”

“I’m not a dragon!”

“Right, of course not. Sorry. Can you shoot the- you called it plasma?- can you shoot the plasma away from you, or does it stay on your hands?”

“I can shoot it.”

“Will you?”

“No.”

“Aww, why not?”

She poked his shoulder, causing him to wince and jerk away from her, rubbing at the spot. “Doy! Cause I don’t want to burn a hole in your walls?”

“Right! Can you-”

“You know,” she interrupted, “I kinda figured this would scare you. I didn’t think I’d be playing twenty questions.”

“Your attempt to threaten me last night would have been a lot more frightening had I known about this if that makes you feel any better. But by now you’re just Shea, a runaway pest hiding away in the spare bedroom of my apartment. Even if you do have superpowers.” Somehow, though she felt like she should be offended, that seemed to have been exactly the right thing to say. She barely stopped herself from throwing her arms around him and hugging him. “Is- is this why you ran away?” He asked cautiously, clearly trying not to upset her again. 

“Sort of,” she sighed. She lit up her hand and held it close to him again, “but I’m still not getting into that!”

“Alright, alright.” Instead of cowering, he just laughed. 

“I just told you something huge, you know,” Shea said. “I feel like you should do the same.”

“That’s not how this usually works.”

“Can’t you just tell me what your deal was earlier?”

Drew frowned, looking much less like an excited child than he had just moments before. He pulled his knees up to his chest and sighed. 

“I’m not an undergrad student,” he sighed. “I skipped a number of grades and was fifteen when I started my first year of college. I’m in my third year of grad school now.”

“This just sounds like bragging to me.”

“Nygh- gah- I’m getting to my point!”

“Fine, jeez, just hurry up!”

“It’s just- everyone expects that I’m some sort of genius because I understand math and science. And I- I can’t read.”

“What do you mean you can’t read? Obviously, you can read.”

“Nygh-no- I- it’s just- it’s just that.” Drew stopped to take a deep breath, closing his eyes. “I know how to read. It’s just that I’m… I’m dyslexic, alright? And nobody knows but me, and now you, and nobody else can know, got it? I have to work harder than anyone else to make sure I don’t misread something and mess everything up, and it’s not easy. And if I get caught making stupidmistakes like misspelling words while grading tests then everyone is going to know and any chance I have at becoming a chemist will be ruined because nobody wants to hire some loser who can’t even read.”

Shea caught herself staring at him as he ranted, teetering between feeling bad for him and thinking that that was the dumbest thing she’d ever heard. “If you’re good enough at math and science to skip so many grades nobody is going to care that you take a little longer to read things that everyone else,” she finally said. 

He smiled at her, but not a real smile. It was a watery sort of smile, a little grateful and a lot sad. “It would be nice if I could believe that, but you have no idea how many teachers I had growing up who wanted to hold me back because of one thing I couldn’t do, instead of focusing on what I could do. How do you expect me to believe it won’t be the same everywhere else?”

“I- I guess I don’t know. I read a lot. Honestly, my books are the only thing I wish I’d brought with me when I left. I guess if you want me to I can edit stuff for you. Make sure your spellings correct and whatnot.” The offer left her mouth before she even realized she was thinking of it, but she found she didn’t regret it. What harm could it do, anyway, to do that?

“Really?” He asked. “I wouldn’t be able to give you anything, you know if you did that.”

Shea shrugged. “Yeah, why not I guess. I’ve got nothing better going on.”

“Oh,” Drew gasped all of a sudden. “I do know what I could do if you did that for me.” 

“What?”

“Come with me,” he said, jumping off the couch. She watched as he stuffed his wallet and keys into his pocket. “Come on.”

She stood up and followed him out the door. “Where are we going?”

“You’ll see!”

Though he never touched her it felt as though he practically dragged her down the steps and out the door before the sleazy doorman even had the chance to see them. 

“It’s just around the corner,” he assured her, after three and a half blocks. A moment later he began marching up the steps of a large brick building, so quickly she didn’t even get the chance to see the sign outside. 

When she walked in she was greeted by the sight of thousands upon thousands of books lined up in rows and rows of shelves. “A library?” She asked, turning to look at Drew, and she hated hearing the excitement in her voice. 

He grinned at her. “It’s not much, I know. But it’s the college library, so you can pick out any books you want, and I’ll check them out for you. There’s a limit of six books, but that’s only for textbooks. Free reading books you can take as many as you want. Although, everything is due in two weeks, so only take as many as you think you’ll read in that time. Though we can come back, of course, whenever you want.”

“I- uh- wow. Okay. Um. Thank you.” It was something so simple, yet she never would have expected anyone let alone someone she barely knew, to do something like this for her. Her parents tried taking away her books and movies at least once a month, determined to make her focus on her hero work,

He seemed to be bouncing in place as he watched her. “Well? What are you waiting for? Go pick out some books, I’ll be here when you’re done.”

Needing no more prompting, she nodded at him and forced herself not to literally run down the aisles in excitement. An hour later she’d collected a number of books that she’d been wanting to get around to, and a number more she’d never heard of before. All in all, she’d grabbed around ten books. She wondered if she should ask Drew if this meant she could stay with him, at least until the books were done, but she decided not to push it. 

It took her another fifteen minutes to find Drew, panic growing as she started to worry that he’d tricked her, and left while she was searching for books. Relief flooded her when she spotted him sitting at one of the tables. He had a puzzle in front of him, pieces scattered everywhere. She watched him, before going over. He put the pieces together like some sort of puzzle machine, he didn’t seem to mix anything up or confuse one piece for another. It didn’t even look like he’d blinked. All in all, it took him maybe four minutes to finish the whole thing. She hated that she found that impressive.

He jumped when she sat across from him, letting the books fall across the table. “Are you ready, then?” 

“I think so.”

“Alright, let’s go.” 

The librarian, a blonde girl with huge blue eyes and a pin in the shape of a bubbling beaker on her shirt, seemed rather shocked to see Drew checking out something that wasn’t a book on robotics or chemistry. Shea didn’t like the way she looked at him, though she couldn’t quite place why. 

Walking back to the apartment felt very reminiscent of the night before, though now they carried books for her instead of him. And also, she only realized later, the fact that she was still wearing his Mighty Martian t-shirt.

The main difference, however, came as they passed a small pizza parlor. Drew paused in the middle of babbling to her about some chemistry concept she couldn’t understand. “Do you want pizza?”

“Yes,” she said, nodding vehemently. She hadn’t been allowed pizza or anything her parents considered junk food, in years. ‘A hero should be healthy in all aspects of life,’ they insisted. “Can we?”

“I suppose we can. Although… ah well, just one slice, okay?” She nodded again and hurried inside, deciding at the last second before the door slammed into his face, to hold the door for him. 

Chapter Text

Grease dripped down her fingers, the cheese burned her tongue, and even one slice of pizza made her stomach hurt after so many years without such greasy foods. It was the best meal she’d ever had. 

Even though she felt like she devoured her slice, Drew somehow managed to finish before her. 

“I’ve been thinking,” he said, staring down at the table. 

“Hm?”

“If you,” he hesitated, and started tapping his fingers on the table. “If you wanted to stay, for a little while longer, you can. I don’t have an awful lot of money, but… well. I mean, I think it’s better than being on the streets, right? So if you wanted to, you can stay and… Editing my work could be your way of repaying me, I suppose.”

Shea held back a sigh of relief. At least now she didn’t have to ask him. “Yeah. Better than being on the streets,” she agreed awkwardly. “Um. Thanks, Drew.”

“We should… I get paid on Monday, and we’ll have to get groceries, but we can put whatever’s leftover towards getting you some new clothes. Sorry, you’ll have to wait another day.”

She just nodded, uncomfortable with being taken care of after so much time spent trying to act independent, and they lapsed into a long silence, not awkward but not comfortable either, until they made it back to Drew’s apartment.

She sat down on the chair to begin reading her books, while he disappeared into his bedroom. As she started on the second chapter he returned, standing in front of her. Though part of her noticed him, she didn’t actually look up until he cleared his throat. 

“For you,” he said, passing over a set of keys. “They’re my spare set. This one is to the building, and this is to the apartment itself. Since you’re staying here and all now.”

“Do I still have to answer questions to get food?”

He smirked. “Maybe sometimes.”

“I’m not telling you my last name.”

“Well, what’s your middle name, then?”

“Marie,” she said with a shrug. Her middle name held no attachment to Shego. 

“Oh.” He looked surprised that she actually answered. 

“What’s yours?”

He quickly shook his head. “No way.”

“Is that because your middle name is embarrassing or because I won’t tell you my last name?”

“One and one.”

“What does that mean?”

“I’ve got two middle names, one of which is embarrassing, the other I won’t tell you until I know your last name.”

“Fair enough.”

Drew nodded and sat down on the couch to resume grading papers. They sat in amicable silence, save for the scratching of Drew’s pen, and the turning of pages in Shea’s book. Occasionally Drew interrupted her reading to ask her to write a word down for him, or check his spelling. That kind of thing from her brothers would have driven her crazy, but for some reason it didn’t bother her at all, coming from him. Maybe because helping him meant she was allowed to stay with him.

After several hours of this, Shea finished her book. She saw the ending coming but in a sort of way that made her feel proud of being clever, rather than annoyed that things were too obvious. She glanced over towards Drew, who she hadn’t realized had stopped writing. He clutched his head between his hands, his glasses abandoned on the table. 

“You okay?”

“Mmph. Headache.”

“Is that from reading too much?” He nodded, pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes. “When do you need those graded by?”

“Ideally tomorrow, so I have time to get everything in the grade book before class.”

“How many do you have left?”

“Five.” He picked up the stack shuffling the pages between his fingers as they fell back to the table. “Maybe six.”

“Do you want me to help you? Or do you want to finish them later?”

He finally peeled his hands away from his eyes and placed his glasses back on. “I’ll finish them later.” He stood up from the couch and stretched, his back and neck audibly popping. “How’s your book?”

“It was good.”

He blinked at her. “You finished it already?”

Shea shrugged. “I’m a fast reader. What are you gonna do now?”

“Make dinner. You don’t have any allergies or anything do you?” She shook her head and he asked, “How do you feel about pesto pasta?”
“Sounds good to me. Do you… I mean, I’m a terrible cook, but if you want help, I’ll help you.”

“I’d rather you didn’t, actually. I like to cook.”

“You really are such a mom.”

“Whatever. At least I’m not green.”

“Hey!” Shea shouted after him, trying not to laugh as he escaped behind the counter and into the kitchen. He kept his head down, but she could see him snickering. With great difficulty, she ignored the impulse to throw a plasma ball at him. “It’s rude to make fun of the way people look, Drew!”

Ignoring her, he called back, “how are you with spice?”

She rolled her eyes and settled back down in her chair. “The hotter the better.” She plucked the next book off her pile and opened it. Though she started off with the intention of actually reading, she ended up watching Drew cook, instead.

Just like earlier that morning, she noticed that he moved as if ready to start dancing. His whole body seemed to sway, constantly. It was actually kind of nice to watch, soothing in some odd way- like a lava lamp. Part of her felt like turning on some music and getting him to really dance. She ignored that thought and listened as he hummed some song that she didn’t recognize under his breath, bobbing his head along with the tune.

“What is that?” she asked, after trying unsuccessfully to place the tune. 

“Oh- it’s um. It’s Fancy-Free. You know, from the movie. D’you like chicken?.”

“I didn’t see it. And yeah, chickens fine.” 

“How could you have missed it? It’s incredible!”

“I like horror movies better.” Drew visibly cringed, and she failed to hold back a laugh. “What? Don’t tell me they scare you!”

“I just don’t like blood is all.” He sounded like he might be sick just thinking about it. “I’m not scared.”

“So demons and ghosts and monsters? That stuff’s fine?” 

“I- I guess. I don’t- I guess it’s fine,” he stammered, sounding more and more nervous with each word. He dropped two well-seasoned pieces of chicken onto a grill pan on the stove. They sizzled, causing Drew to smile ever so slightly. 

“Cool,” Shea said, not bothering to hold back a smirk. “Next time we go to the library we should rent a horror movie, something good and creepy like The Exorciser.” 

The last bits of color drained out of Drew’s face, as he gave her a stare like a deer caught in headlights. She felt a laugh bubbling in her throat as she stared back, and forced it down. She needed to see how he would react to her challenging him like this. Well, she didn’t need to, technically, but she sure wanted to. 

“Erm- you know, I’ve got plenty of other movies. We could always watch those.”

She nodded. “Well, yeah, obviously. I still want to watch The Exorciser, sometime soon.”

He grumbled out a number of incoherent sounds, before snapping his jaw shut and turning back to his cooking just in time to stop the water from boiling over.

“Okay, next time we can get it,” he mumbled, while he scooped the pasta into two separate bowls. When he finished cutting up the chicken and adding it to the bowls, she jumped up to take her place on the counter. “Did you- we can eat at the table, if you’d prefer.”

“Sure, why not?” Shea slid back off the counter, took her bowl from his hands and followed him to the small square table at the opposite end of the kitchen. She found herself able to answer her question of ‘why not’ rather quickly. Why not? Because sitting across from Drew, eating (excessively delicious and perfectly spiced) pasta, felt like a date. Or at least, what she imagined a date might feel like. She’d never been on one, and sappy movies annoyed her to no end so she couldn’t say for sure, but it certainly seemed like one. 

 To say the least, she finally, actually, felt a little awkward. For his part, Drew didn’t seem to notice. “Good?” he asked after a few long silent moments spent shoveling food into their mouths.

“Yeah. Really good. Where’d you-” Shea cleared her throat and tried again, “where’d you learn to cook?”

“My mother. Well, in a way.”

“What does that mean?”

“First promise that if you ever meet my mother you’ll never tell her what I’m about to tell you.” He held his hand out to her, pinky extended like a child making a schoolyard promise not to tell the teacher she did something bad. She rolled her eyes but linked her pinky with his anyway. He leaned across the table, and, as if he were telling her his most sacred secret, whispered, “she’s a terrible cook. I mean, her food is unedible.”

“Inedible,” she corrected.

His shoulders slumped and he glared at her for a moment before shrugging. “Whatever. My point is, she can’t cook. But I’ve always liked food, so I started offering to help. And I started experimenting. And I suppose since cooking is just chemistry, I took to it rather quickly. Within a few weeks, I had essentially taken over in the kitchen, and continued to be the primary chef in the household until I first left for college.” A distant, dreamy sort of smile took over his face. “My mother insists she’s a good cook, but she’s always rather pleased to have me take over when I go home.”

“My mom used to try and get me to help when she made dinners, but every time I did something went wrong. Once everyone got food poisoning, and we never knew why because we literally just made veggie fried rice. How old were you when you started cooking?”

“Bad veggies, maybe. And I suppose I was about…” Drew’s voice trailed off as he thought. Under his breath, quiet enough that she wasn’t sure how she heard him, he muttered, “Dad was still around, so…” Then louder, “I must have been around seven or eight when I actually took over in the kitchen.”

“Seriously? You were cooking on your own when you were thatlittle?”

He nodded. “It’s a wonder my mother ever let me. She and my father bickered for weeks about the dangers of removing the training wheels from my bicycle.” Laughing he added, “you can imagine their surprise when my father finally took them off, and I rode perfectly fine. I’d been sneaking off to ride my cousins’ bike long before the argument even began.”

She started laughing herself, as she told him, “Merrick, my younger older brother, learned to ride his bike after I did. I was a pretty stubborn kid so I just kinda taught myself one day. The next day he practically begged me to teach him. We lived on a hill, so I took him to the top of the street, promised I’d walk him down slowly the first time, and then I pushed him. He went crying to our parents once he reached the bottom, despite the fact that he figured out how to ride the bike on his way down. He didn’t have so much as a scratch to show off, he just likes attention.” 

“That’s evil,” Drew gasped out between laughs. Something in her brain twitched at that. How odd, to be called evil after so many years of literally being a superhero. Even more odd, was the fact that the way he said it made her feel sort of proud. “I mean, that’s like Evil Enchantress from the East levels of evil.”

“Is that a jab at the green skin thing?”

He grinned at her, and she realized the awkwardness she’d felt when they first started eating had completely faded. “Not intentionally, though I suppose it fits.”

She flicked a piece of chicken at him. “Shut up.”

“Hey! You got pesto on my glasses,” he protested. His face fell into a pout as he pulled the glasses off his face to wipe them clean. 

“Evil Enchantress from the East is from The Warlock of Zo, right?”

“Don’t tell me you’ve never seen that either!”

“I did when I was a kid!”

“You still are a kid!”

“I’m sixteen!”

“I was in college at your age, but I was still a kid.”

She groaned. “Yeah, yeah, the super-genius was in college at fifteen. You’re five years older than me, Lipsky. At least I’m not afraid of a little bit of blood.”

The lingering smirk fell away from his lips, as his face flushed. “At least my cooking’s never given anyone food poisoning,” he countered, meekly. 

“Okay, okay. Point to you. I was right though, right? It is Warlock of Zo?”

“Yes. I think I have a copy, actually.”

“So, you don’t count yourself as a kid anymore, yeah?”

“Well, no. Besides, by legal definitions I am actually an adult, unlike you.”

“Then what’s with the kids’ movies, huh? You’re an adult living on your own, watching The Warlock of Zo?”

“It’s a good movie,” he yelped, his voice squeaking awkwardly. He cleared his throat, and continued in a more normal tone, “besides, it’s nostalgic.”

She sighed to disguise her laugh, and in an attempt to drown out the thoughts of how cute he was when he got flustered. “You’re a weird guy, Drew.”

“Nygh! Says the girl who catches on fire!”

She held one burning hand up in a half-shrug. “Yeah, so I got freaky glowing hands. What’re you gonna do?” She let the flame die, and went to take another bite of her dinner, only to find that she’d already eaten every bite. “Weird or not, I gotta say you’re a damn good cook.”

“Oh, well, yes. Thank you. I’m glad you enjoyed it.” Watching him blush again, Shea started to suspect that he was as unused to being complimented as she was. For all intents and purposes, creepy old men tracking the number of days that went by before they could technically legally have sex with her did not count as a compliment.

Ignoring her thoughts, she suddenly found herself asking, “what happened to your dad?” Even as the words left her mouth she wished she could take them back, or that her brain had at least given her some sort of chance to think through the words before she spoke.

“Oh.” Drew glanced down at the table, lacing his fingers together. “I’d rather not talk about all that, actually. Maybe… maybe at some point, but just… not right now.”

“Okay, yeah. That’s um… that’s fine.” Instantly two conclusions came to mind. Either he never liked his father, words like abuse came quickly to mind, or something tragic had happened, that Drew didn’t want to talk about with her. “If you- if you ever change your mind, I guess.” She didn’t finish her sentence, but he nodded anyway.

“Thank you. It’s just… it’s a lot to explain, really. And I don’t usually prefer to.”

“Have you ever gone to therapy?” Again, she hated herself for talking. It took all her willpower not to literally slap a hand over her mouth. 

Thankfully, he just laughed. “I cook with pots and pans that I took from students planning on throwing them away at the end of each year and I can’t even afford to buy clothes that actually fit properly. I certainly can’t afford a therapist, whether it may help me or not.” 

“Fair point.” Desperate to change the subject before she embarrassed herself any further she said, “Um, I can do the dishes, I guess. Since you cooked. If you want.” 

“That seems fair enough. You just have to rinse the pot and the bowls out, but otherwise, everything can go into the dishwasher.” 

She stood up, nodding at his instructions, and took both their bowls back into the kitchen. From the corner of her eye, she watched him stand up and walk back into the living room. 

“Do you, um… Would you like to watch a movie?”

She did, actually, desperately. Some part of her screamed that this was exactly how the night needed to go. Nonetheless, she responded, “got anything better than kid stuff?”

“Ny- gah, zip it! We could watch Fancy-Free since you’ve never seen it.”

She stuffed the grill pan into the dishwasher and turned around to face him. “It sounds so boring though.”

“Aw c’mon, Shea! It’s really good!”

“Let’s strike a deal.”

Immediately he looked suspicious and worried. “What kind of a deal?” he asked. She could see him shrinking in on himself, his shoulders slumping, his arms wrapping around his chest. 

“If I watch this with you tonight, you actually have to watch The Exorciser with me, when we get it. You can’t just leave me to watch it on my own.”

“You’re not scared of watching it on your own, are you?” She could tell that he was trying to tease her, but his voice came out so small that she couldn’t even bother to pretend to take his mocking seriously. 

“Course not. I just think watching you act like a baby about will be funny.”

“You’re really such a pest,” he groaned. “Alright, fine. Deal. Since I know you’d make me watch it either way.”

“True.”

When he stood up to set up the movie, she stole his seat on the couch, not knowing why she felt inclined to do so. She watched him as he scanned the shelves full of movies, part of her secretly hoping he wouldn’t find it, the other part of her sincerely worried that he wouldn’t. Eventually, he did find it, and he practically bounced with excitement as he turned it on.

When he finally turned back around he took a startled step back upon seeing her in his spot. “I was sitting there,” he pointed out.

“Didn’t call dibs.”

“What?”

Gah, he was such an only child. “You didn’t call dibs,” she said with a shrug. “Seats open to anyone if you don’t call dibs.”

“Pest.”

“Dork.”

“Oh, just shush and watch the movie, will you?” She snickered but nodded. He hesitated for a moment with his hand hovering over the light switch. “Is it alright if I turn the lights off?”

“All movies are better in the dark. Especially the boring ones, so you can fall asleep.”

“Ngh- I’d keep them on if you weren’t right that movies are better in the dark.”

He sat down again, not on the chair like she’d half expected, but on the other side of the couch. Though it had been true throughout most of the time they’d spent together, Shea had a moment of clarity in which she realized that he was close enough for her to touch. And not just touch as in ‘she could reach him’ but touch as in ‘if she leaned in a little she could rest her head on his shoulder, or grab a hold of his hand’. She hated how much she wanted to do that, and hated, even more, the fact that she knew she probably wouldn’t.

She yelled at her mind to just shut up, as the movie started. Immediately she recognized the opening song as the one Drew had been humming. And immediately, he began singing along. She couldn’t help but smile as she watched him happily bopping along to the music. And actually, he had a fairly decent voice.

There were two things she’d hated about the movie, Shea realized as the end credits began to scroll across the screen. The first was that, despite her trying not to think about it, she was still very aware of the empty space between herself and Drew.

The second issue was even worse. “Damn it,” she sighed, as he turned to face her, a stupid grin on his face. “You were right,” she confessed before he even had the chance to ask. “I liked it.”

“I told you so,” he laughed, the stupid grin growing even wider. “I told you it’s a good movie. And you thought you’d fall asleep.”

Just to alleviate some of the desire to touch him that her body seemed to feel, she reached over and pushed his shoulder, enough to jostle him without hurting. “Yeah, yeah. Don’t go getting all giddy on me. The Exorciser is still gonna be better.”

And just like that, the smile vanished. “Well, um, we’ll… we’ll find out, I suppose.” 

She shook her head. “Nah, I already know it’s better.”

“I don’t believe you, but a deal’s a deal. At least we have to wait a while to get it,” he added under his breath. 

“Or we could go back tomorrow. After all, you only have a few tests left to grade.” She’d been joking, but when his gaze shot to hers, all wild and frightened, she realized that it was more fun to make him think she was serious.  

“No,” he quickly burst out. “No, I’m sure there was something else I had to do. I mean, yes, I have to finish grading the tests. And then I have to put all the grades into the grade book. Of course, I’ve got my own homework to do as well. And now that I’m cooking for two instead of one, that’s going to take more time. I’ll have to make up a meal plan for the week, too, so that I know what to get at the grocery store tomorrow, and-”

She held a hand up, and his rambling stopped. “Sounds to me like we’ll have plenty of time to swing by the library.”

“Nygh, no. No, we definitely won’t.”

“Grading and homework will go by a lot faster now that I’m here to help. You’ll be done before you know it.” She tried, and she was fairly certain failed, to suppress a grin at his growing panic. 

“But-but-but,” he stammered, seeming unable to get any further. He wiped his palms off on his jeans. As she had earlier that morning she snapped his suspenders against his chest. “Ow! Would you quit doing that?” 

“Hey, it worked.”

“Worked to do what?” Drew demanded, rubbing at his chest. “Hurt?”

“Worked to make you remember how to talk,” she said, laughing. It took him a moment, but he laughed a bit, too. “Really though, if we have the time to pick it up, wouldn’t you rather just get it over with?”

“Erm… fine,” he groaned. “I guess you’re right.”

“I almost always am.”

“You weren’t right about Fancy-Free.”

“I said almost always!”

He nodded slowly, and yawned, popping his jaw. He glanced at the clock, which Shea saw read well past midnight, then screwed his eyes shut, and leaned backwards, just enough to rest his head against the back of the couch. 

“I’m tired,” he said, without any real emotion behind the statement. 

“Baby.”

“Pest.”

“Dork.”

He lazily grabbed a pillow and smacked her with it with almost no force behind the swing. “Runaway brat.”

She laughed, pushing the pillow back away from herself, and mimicked him, leaning her head back against the couch. She found that she felt pretty tired too, all of a sudden. Once her eyes were shut, she didn’t really want to open them again. 

“We should probably go to bed,” she murmured.

“Mm-hmm.”

Neither one of them moved. After another minute or so of silence, she managed to pry one eye open to see that his head had fallen forward, his chin resting against his chest. His glasses dangled precariously off the end of his nose, threatening to fall off at any moment.

“Drew?” she whispered. He didn’t respond, so she poked his arm. He, again, didn’t respond, but a moment later she heard a soft snore. She yawned, and already defending the choice to herself, she gently pried the glasses off his face and placed them neatly on the table. Just so they wouldn’t fall and break, she told herself. 

She meant to stand up. She really did. But a minute passed, and she didn’t move. Another minute passed, and her head practically fell back against the couch again. Not even another minute passed and Shea heard Drew murmur something incomprehensible in his sleep before she drifted off beside him.

Chapter Text

Shea noticed two things immediately upon waking up. First, her neck hurt. Every time she so much as tried to move it, pain went rippling through her. Why exactly had she let herself fall asleep with her head hanging off the back of the couch? Second, she noticed that Drew’s head rested in her lap, and she had, at some point in the night, buried her hand in his hair. At least, that's what the feeling of the loose curls wrapped around her fingers indicated.

Her eyes shot open as she realized this, her head snapping up despite the pain it caused in her neck. She forced herself to take deep breaths, trying to stay calm so she could examine the situation. One of Drew's knees stuck up in the air, his foot resting on the armrest. His other leg hung over it. His right arm covered his face, his fingers less than an inch away from touching hers. His left arm dangled off the side of the couch, limp.

In contrast, she hadn't moved much at all. The only real difference between the way she'd fallen asleep and the way she woke up, was her hand in his hair. Which, she noticed with a hint of annoyance, was really soft—and even more mussy than the day before, thanks to her. 

She could still hear his quiet snoring, which gave her some sense of relief. At least he didn't know about the situation they were in. She needed to figure out how to get out of it before he woke up too. Knowing they had, in a way, cuddled during the night embarrassed her enough. She didn't want to know how much more flustered she'd feel if he also knew.

Running away crossed her mind. Pushing him off of her and running out the door to never come back seemed far more enticing than dealing with it. Until she remembered that she needed him, that without him she would be on the streets. Also, she didn't actually like the idea of never getting to see him again. Whether she liked it or not, she liked him. It didn't make the whole cuddling thing any less embarrassing. Sure, she'd sort of wanted him to move closer while they watched Fancy-Free, but she didn't want him to know about that!

She bit her lip, debating her next move. Running away was out of the question. She wondered if she would be able to move without waking him. Would it be possible for her to disentangle herself from him, and remain quiet enough that he didn't wake up? The more she thought about it, the more it seemed like her only option. To make matters worse, the more she thought about it the more time she wasted. She could hear the clock in the kitchen ticking away the seconds until Drew woke up. 

Now or never, she decided and began trying to get up. She pulled her hand out of his hair, careful not to pull it, and lifted his head up and out of her lap. She slid out from under him, before letting his head drop back down onto the cushion. She sighed in relief when his only response was to twitch and turn over.

She bolted back into the sanctity of her own room, careful not to slam the door behind her. Trying not to hyperventilate, she wondered what she was meant to do next. Did she open the door and pretend to just be waking up? Did she wait to hear him moving around in the kitchen before leaving the room? Ugh. Why did he have to go and do that? And why did she have to be so darn embarrassed about it?

She crawled under the cover of her bed, trying to ignore the part of her mind that told her she was only embarrassed because she’d liked it. Because she’d liked how warm he felt, and how soft his hair was between her fingers. Crap, she’d even liked that she could smell that stupid blueberry-ash shampoo, and somehow, on him, it actually smelled good. 

No. No way did she like it. She definitely didn’t like it. Or him, for that matter. She buried her face in her pillow and groaned. Except she did like him. Even though he was a total dork, even though horror movies obviously scared him, hell even though he liked Mighty Martian, she couldn’t deny that she liked him. 

She stayed in bed for another few minutes, before growing bored of feeling embarrassed and getting back up. She refused to hesitate at the door and instead walked through it before she could let herself stop. When she stepped outside she saw Drew, sitting up on the couch and stretching, the rumpled shirt lifting up and exposing his back. She almost slammed the door shut again, except he turned around and saw her.

She faked a yawn and stepped into the hallway, rubbing at her eyes. “Morning,” she mumbled.

He yawned too, though she presumed his was real, and said, “Yeah, mornin’. Um… Sorry for falling asleep out here.”

“It’s fine.”

“What time did you leave?” Shea just shrugged, but he nodded as if her non-answer told him everything he needed to know. She certainly hoped it didn’t tell him anything actually worth knowing. He put his glasses on, blinking, and asked, “are you hungry?”

“I guess, a little.”

“How do you feel about pancakes?”

She shrugged again. “Sounds good.” As he walked past her into the kitchen she shot out a hand to stop him. “Are you still humming Fancy-Free?”

He paused to glare at her. “It’s a good song!” By the time she jumped onto the counter to watch him cook he had begun humming again. Shea swung her legs back and forth, unconsciously moving to the rhythm of the song as he began mixing the batter. 

“Check that cabinet over there, will you?” he asked suddenly, interrupting his own humming. “I think there’s chocolate chips.” 

To her dismay, she caught herself humming the last few lines of the song as she jumped off the counter. As soon as she realized she stopped, snatched the half-empty bag of chocolate chips from the cabinet, and turned to toss them to him. She paused when she saw the smug look on Drew’s face. 

“Told you it was a good song,” he said, clearly trying to suppress a laugh. 

“Oh, shut up!” She threw the bag at him, with a little more force than was strictly necessary. He fumbled after it bounced off his chest but managed to catch it before it hit the floor. She took her place on the counter once more. “You just got it stuck in my head, is all.”

Dumping the chocolate chips into the bowl he turned to face her. “Admit you like the song or… or you’re not allowed to have pancakes.”

“That’s not a fair justification for withholding food, Lipsky.”

“Just admit it!”

“Any confession given under threat, fear, torture or promise is labeled an involuntary confession and is not admissible in court.”

He blinked at her, looking perplexed for a moment. Then he started laughing. “Well, alright then. Fine, you can still have pancakes.”

“It is true, you know,” she pointed out, annoyed at herself for how much she hated the thought that he didn’t believe her. 

“I’m sure it is,” he said, turning around to the stove on. 

“Besides, I already said that I liked the movie last night.”

“True, but you never said you liked the song.” 

“You’re such a dork.”

Like he was a little kid he stuck his tongue out her and started pouring the pancake batter into the pan. “Pest.”

Shea scoffed and lit her hands, as she watched him. She tried to toss a ping-pong ball sized plasma ball back and forth, something she’d gotten better at but catching the plasma once she released it still proved to be difficult. 

“You know,” she began, distracted, “I wonder if, at the right temperature, my plasma could actually work to cook food.”

“You can control the temperature too?”

“Sure. Sometimes at least, and only up to a point.”

“We should try it!”

“What?” She asked, the tiny plasma ball finally falling from her grasp and singing her leg. “Ow. No! That’d be so stupid. Remember what I said about the whole food poisoning thing? Not to mention the plasma is literally radioactive.”

“We don’t have to eat it! C’mon, Shea, please! Now I wanna find out.”

“Ugh! Fine.” She held her hand out, her palm facing the ceiling. He grinned, and placed the pan on top of her hand, holding it in place for her. She slowly let her palm warm up, stopping when she started to feel the heat burning the calluses. 

The pancake batter started bubbling much too quickly in her opinion, but Drew kept smiling. At least, he kept smiling until a sudden popping sound echoed throughout the small kitchen, the moment before the entire pan shattered. Pieces of smoking metal fell to the floor, pancake batter covering her hand and dripping off of her fingers. 

He yelped and jumped away from her, dropping the handle which clattered to the floor with the rest of the broken pan. He stared, shell-shocked, at the mess.

“I’m sorry,” she blurted quickly, dousing the flames and pulling her hands back into herself. 

Slowly, the smile spread back across his face. “Neat,” he whispered. “I didn’t think metal could shatter like that. Good thing I have others.” He reached back into the cabinet and pulled out another pan.

Shea shrugged, the slight guilt she’d felt already fading away as she wiped her hand off on a paper towel. “Cheap metal, probably.”

“Probably.” He held the other pan out. “We should try that again.”

She nearly kicked him. “No, we shouldn’t.”

“But don’t you want to know if-”

“Just make the pancakes!”

“Fine,” he grumbled. “Um… Do you- Would you mind cleaning-” He gestured vaguely to the mess on the floor.

“Only cause it’s kinda my fault,” she sighed, before jumping off the counter for what must have been the billionth time that morning. At least she wasn’t humming anymore. And, she thought as she chucked broken, melted metal into the trashcan under the sink, at least she no longer felt even the slightest embarrassment. Although she knew she would if she focused on the image of Drew lying across her lap any longer. Distracting herself from that thought she asked, “do you have syrup?”

“In the fridge.”

They ate at the table again, but eating chocolate-filled pancakes with syrup and butter dripping down the sides felt distinctly less date-like than the previous nights' pasta had, for which Shea was grateful. 

“I haven’t had pancakes since I was a kid.”

“You still are-”

“A little kid,” she corrected, rolling her eyes.

“Why not?”

“I just wasn’t allowed to.” She really didn’t feel like going into detail about her mother's increasingly restrictive diet and exercise plans. She still hadn’t even told him that she was a superhero. Although, she knew it was only a matter of time before someone recognized her while she was out with him. What was she going to do then? She knew she should just tell him. But, she found herself worrying, maybe it was too late- maybe he’d be upset with her for not telling him earlier, for some reason or another. 

Well, she had to admit to herself, there was one good reason for him to be upset with her for not telling him. She hadn’t considered it before. If anyone found out about him, would they assume he’d kidnapped her? Watching chocolatey syrup drip down his chin she just knew that Drew was not the kind of guy who could handle jail. Hell, he’d probably freak out about getting yelled at by a teacher, it was anyone’s guess what he’d do if he got arrested. 

Shea’s fork clattered to her plate, guilt twisting her stomach. If something happened to him, it would be her fault. If he got arrested or hurt, or- gah- even if he misspelled a word it would be her fault now. And what if he was right? What if his career never got anywhere because of a spelling mistake that she let him make? What if her brothers found him when she wasn’t around? Would they hurt him? What about her parents? What if one of the villains found them? Electronique? Or The Hunter? Would they know that hurting him would hurt her worse than anything else they could throw her way?

Would seeing him hurt, hurt her? Sure, she hated watching Wendell or Westley get hurt, but she never really spent much time worrying about them. Half the time she saw Heath or Merrick hurt she found it funny. At least, when she could tell it wasn’t a serious injury. She’d met Drew less than two days ago, how could she possibly feel so strongly about protecting him, when she felt almost no inclination towards protecting her family- or anyone else, for that matter?

“Are you alright?” he asked, interrupting her spiraling thoughts. For a moment she just blinked at him, until she realized she probably looked even more ridiculous than she felt.

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine.” She stared at her plate forcing herself to eat the last few bites of her food. When she looked up again, he was staring at her.

“Are you- I mean- do you. Do you… miss… home?”

“No,” she laughed, “Not at all. It’s just…”

“Just?”

Shea sighed. “I’m worried that if, on the off chance that anyone is actually looking for me… I just- I don’t.” She paused, pulling in a breath. Even back when she’d been a perfectly normal child she’d been bad at talking about her emotions, and half a decade of forcing herself not to feel anything at all definitely wasn’t helping. In a hurried rush she said, “If anyone is actually looking for me, and they actually find me, I don’t want them assuming you kidnapped me or something.”

“Do you really think they aren’t looking for you?”

“How did you manage to completely miss my point?”

“No, I understood your point. I just don’t think that part is worth worrying about all that much. I mean, they can’t really put me into prison for something I didn’t do. But, really. Why are you so sure nobody is looking for you?” She shrugged but didn’t answer. They were looking for Shego, and she wasn’t Shego. “I am sorry,” Drew finally murmured. “I can’t imagine what it would be like to think my family wouldn’t look for me.”

“It’s not that bad. I didn’t run away for attention or anything.”

“Why did you run away?”

She started to open her mouth but shut it quickly when she noticed his smirk. “Shut up.”

“You could just tell me, you know.”

Inside her head, her own voice screamed at her to just tell him. After all, him not knowing was why she started to feel so guilty and upset in the first place. Instead what left her mouth was, “I could, but I’m not going to.”

“You’re such a pest.”

“What’s your point?”

“My point is just that. You’re a pest.”

“Probably why nobody’s gonna look for me.”

He bit his lip, staring at her. “I would,” he blurted, his face flushing even before he finished speaking. She didn’t get a chance to respond he so quickly stood up and walked to the kitchen. She picked up her own plate, trying to work out just what she was meant to say to that.

Her mind provided nothing helpful but she found herself saying, “does that mean I’m not just some runaway brat anymore?”

He was still blushing when he turned to look at her. “You are a runaway brat but, you know, it’s… it’s nice having you around, I guess. You’re not, you know- I just. I just… You’re worth looking for.”

“Oh,” she managed. “Um… thanks. I… Uh- yeah. Thanks.” 

He rubbed the back of his neck, looking away from her. “Yeah, sure. You’re- um, just. No problem.”

She swallowed, blinking back tears that threatened to fall. Gah! What was wrong with her? Since when did she feel like crying just because some geek said something kinda nice? And why couldn’t she just know how to respond? But, she had to admit, he was sweet and… she sort of liked it. 

Shea blinked as Drew cleared his throat. “Anyway, I’m going to take a shower. Then maybe we should talk about what we want to get for groceries tomorrow,” his voice trailed off as if he were asking for her permission rather than telling her.

“Okay.” She shrugged, trying to sound more casual than she felt. He nodded, in her general direction before walking back towards his bedroom.

Groaning, she walked over to the couch, collapsing on it with about as much dramatic flair as she could muster. Which, really, wasn’t all that much, and she almost instantly sat back up. She sighed and grabbed the previous night's discarded book, glad for the escape. 

She quickly grew so engrossed in her reading that she didn’t even realize that Drew had left his room- let alone actually taken a shower- until he sat down in the chair. 

“Good book?” She glanced up at him, from her position lying on her stomach, hummed a response, and went back to reading. “Groceries?”
“Shush. Lemme finish the chapter.”

“Well, alright then, fine.” He fell silent… for all of one minute. “What’s it about?” he asked, leaning over the arm of the couch to pull at the cover of the book.

She held back a sigh and put her book down. When she caught him eagerly watching her she couldn’t help the smirk that spread across her face. “Pest.”

“Hey,” he protested, immediately, the dumb boyish grin vanishing from his face. “You’re the pest!”

“Fine then. Dork,” she amended.

“Hmph. Runaway brat, indeed.” He sat back in his chair, crossing his arms and mock-glaring at the tv.

Ignoring him, Shea continued reading. She couldn’t help glancing over to him again, to see that within seconds of assuming his pout, he’d become distracted and had begun to fidget with the TV remote. 

She’d make fun of him for that if it didn’t remind her so much of herself. She hated being still, and even when fully engrossed in reading she’d be bouncing her knees or tapping her fingers in a quiet ba-dum-bum-bum on the books cover. At least she had the overworked superhero excuse. It seemed like his ability to sit still just so happened to be nonexistent. The way he glanced around the room, flipping the remote in his hands all the while, told her that he probably didn’t even realize he was fidgeting. She forced herself to stop watching him, and finished the chapter, muttering about plot twists as she eventually put the book down. 

She heard Drew say, “groceries?” again before she spotted him. He’d moved to the kitchen table, where papers were scattered around in front of him. He must have had his face in hands before she looked over; one of his cheeks was flushed a deep red color and his glasses were awkwardly skewed towards one side of his face. Shea noticed for the first time that he gelled his hair back after his shower. It had the same sleek, slick look that it’d had the first night they met—without the dishevelment that follows a long day.

“You know,” she drawled as she made her way over to him “I just realized you never actually told me what your deal was Friday night.” His other cheek flushed too, and he avoided her gaze as he shuffled his papers together. She caught a brief glimpse at some sort of blue-prints, with tiny notes scribbled all along the margin, before he flipped the papers over. 

“That’s not important,” he muttered. “We really do need to make a list, if you want me to make anything you like this week.”

“Whatever.” Well, now he’d piqued her curiosity, but she knew she could get him to spill eventually so there was little point in pressing the matter. “How is this gonna work?’

“Well, I normally just make a list of what meals I want to eat over the course of the week. And then from there what ingredients I’ll need. It just makes the actual shopping go faster. Is there anything you’re going to want?”

“I’m honestly fine eating anything. I don’t really think I’m that picky.”

“Do you want me to just do this on my own then? You have no preferences whatsoever?”

“I mean, I like spice. But… well,” she argued with herself quickly, wondering if what she felt like saying needed to be said, before finally continuing, “all you need to know about growing up with my family is that my brothers and I have all been on super restrictive diets since the whole thing with the comet. So, you know, I don’t have a whole lot of opinions on foods. Except for fruits and vegetables. If you try to make me eat cantaloupe or turnips I will shoot you with a plasma ball.”

“There’s no need to threaten me, you know.” His eyebrow furrowed as he wrote something down on a piece of paper. He scratched some of it out, then sheepishly slid it over to her, mumbling, “I don’t know how to spell cantaloupe, but it doesn’t look right to me.” 

She looked down to see NO turnips or cantalope, written across the top of the paper; he’d crossed out cantaloupe and re-written it three times before giving it to her. With a more mocking than serious roll of her eyes, she wrote it down for him, too caught up in the fact that he’d actually wanted to make a note of the foods she disliked to make any sort of comment. 

“Why on earth is there a ‘u’ in cantaloupe?” Shea just laughed, which earned her a sharp glare.

She held her hands up. “Hey, I don’t decide how words are spelled, I just spell them.”

“I just spell them,” he said, in a grumbly high-pitched mockery of her voice. She didn’t know if he was trying to annoy her or make her laugh harder, but he succeeded at the latter. A moment later he started laughing too. 

“Alright, alright. So, no turnip or cantaloupe. Anything you do want?”

She shook her head, then stole the paper from him. “I’ll write, you just tell me what to put down.” She did her best to ignore the smile he shot her way as she took the pen he offered her.

It took almost an hour, and a few back and forth debates over what meals sounded better before they actually managed to finish the grocery list. “I have to admit,” Shea said, “this is a lot more exhaustive than I would have expected.”

A strange smirk flitted across Drew’s face before he obviously forced it away. “Yes, well, it doesn’t tend to take that long. But it’s normally just me deciding what to make.”

She narrowed her eyes at him before deciding that asking him about the smirk was going to be less than useless and said, “so, what now?”

“What now what?”

“What’s the plan for the rest of the day?”

“I’ve got the last of the tests to grade, and then I have to put it all in the grade book. I’ve got homework for advanced organic chemistry, and I figure we’ll need to eat lunch sometime between all that, and I’ll make dinner sometime after I’m done.”

“Are we going to go to the library before or after dinner?”

“Erm… after. If I’m done with everything else.”

“I’m sure you’ll get it done with plenty of time for us to watch The Exorciser.”

“We’ll see.” He shrugged.

It dawned on her all at once, why he’d kept pulling her into debates about dinner choices when she couldn’t care less what he made so long as she was allowed to eat it. She couldn’t help the surprised, borderline offended, gasp that left her. “You baby! You’ve been stalling, haven’t you? There was no reason for this to take so long!”

This time the smirk that graced his face stayed put. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He was practically humming he sounded so smug. He left her at the table, and she found she could do little more than stare after him as he sauntered towards the couch. 

She almost called him ‘poindexter’ again, just because she knew it would bother him, but decided that was pushing it too far. Instead, she crossed her arms, called out, “you’re such a wimp,” and left it at that. 

He grinned at her from the couch. “I’d prefer cunning, thank you.” 

“What’s so cunning about stalling on getting a horror movie that I’m gonna make you watch at some point, anyway?”

“Well, it’s almost time for lunch and you only just figured out that I’ve been stalling,” he said. “I think that at least counts. And it means I don’t have to watch it yet, which works for me.”

“No, it means I figured it out before the library closes, so now I’m going to rush you through the rest of the day just so we can get it.”

“Nygh! Gah- no! No, it means we’re not going to have time to go. It means I won!”

She rolled her eyes. “Where do you keep the grade book? I’ll start putting the grades in for you.”

“I’m not telling you,” he said, the grin turning into nothing short of a pout as he crossed his arms.

“D’you really want me snooping through your room? Don’t think I won’t,” she threatened. She didn’t actually want to snoop through his room, but he didn’t have to know it was an empty threat. 

“You’re not going to find anything interesting in there.” The slight squeak in his voice belied him and Shea had to force her mind to stop wandering to all the ‘interesting’ things she might find in a college guys’ bedroom. 

“Ew,” she muttered, despite herself. Drew’s face turned red, and she couldn’t help wondering if her face turned equally green as she felt it heating up.

“I- nngh! I didn’t mean it like that. I just meant that I don’t keep the grade book in there!” He reached over to the nightstand, yanked open the drawer and pulled out a black leather notebook. “Here!” He chucked the book… well, saying at her would be generous, but he chucked it in her general direction. She snatched it out of the air before it could fall to the ground. She beamed at him as he grumbled, “have at it.”

“So, are we going to the library before or after dinner?” Shea asked again a few minutes later, putting some ‘Darren Fisley’s’ damning grade of 36% into the grade book.

Drew groaned and buried his face in his palms like he might start to cry. “We can go after lunch. I’m making sloppy joe’s,” he declared as if trying to prove that he was in charge. Shea didn’t say anything, but already she could tell she held more sway over him than either of them had expected when he first agreed to let her stay the night.

 “Sounds good, chief. Now gimme that, I’ve got to put the last grade into the grade book.” He begrudgingly handed over the final graded exam and shuffled into the kitchen. “There’s no point in trying to stall anymore,” she teased, “pick up the pace, Lipsky.”

“Zip it, pest.”

“Dork.”

“You’re such a brat,” he whined, but before he’d even begun to start cooking he was laughing.

Chapter Text

“You know,” Shea said around a mouthful of extra-sloppy sloppy joe, “my older brother once tried to start a food fight with sloppy joe’s in the school cafeteria.”

“Why?”

“Eh.” She shrugged. “He’s an attention seeker. Probably got talked over once and decided to do something drastic.”

Drew snorted. “Did he get in trouble?”

“Oh, yeah. He managed to hit one of the teachers. If it weren’t for Heath and his goody-two-shoes act Merrick would’ve gotten suspended. Only benefit to having Heath as a brother really. Merrick and I could get away with pretty much anything.”

“Oh?” Drew asked, leaning forward with a smirk. “And what kinds of things did you get away with, exactly?”

Ignoring his tone, she answered, “a lot. I knocked some kid off the swings when I was six, cause he was annoying me. The teachers decided I musta been standing up for some other kid that had been getting bullied, cause that’s what Heath woulda done. Kevin got sent to the corner for the rest of recess and I got an extra pudding cup.”

“Poor Kevin,” he scoffed. 

“Kevin deserved it.”

“I’m sure.”

“He did!” Shea insisted. “He used to chase the other girls around the playground trying to look up their skirts.”

Drew wiped some dribbled sauce off of his face before joking, “and what? You were jealous or something?”

“Oh, please.” She rolled her eyes. “Not hardly.”

“Well, you’re not six anymore. How long did getting away with things last?”

“Until this happened.” Shea held up one glowing hand, then shrugged and stuffed the rest of her food into her mouth. 

“What actually happened after that? Was it difficult to get a handle on your powers?”

“It was tough for all of us, I guess. Heath kept breaking things. I once locked Merrick in a desk drawer because he shrank and fell inside.”

“So you locked him in ?” Drew exclaimed.

“I didn’t mean to! I didn’t see him fall in!”

“Somehow I find it difficult to believe that.”

“He shrinks down to barely visible sizes and you’re gonna try and blame me for not seeing him?”

“I suppose that’s fair.”

“ I suppose that’s fair,” Shea mimicked, earning herself a glare. She laughed and continued, “the twins were the most obvious. When they didn’t get their way they would clone themselves until you could hardly breathe around the number of them in the room. But mine were the most volatile since I’m the only one who ever, you know, burst into flames.” She held her hand up again, to emphasize her point. 

“Did it hurt?”

“The flames?”

“The comet.”

“No idea,” Shea quickly shook her head. “We were legally dead for a day or so. My parents had started to plan our funerals.” Well, it was technically true enough. She didn’t really feel like going into the details of how she could feel everything that was happening to her body, even while being dead. She didn’t know how to make sense of it herself, let alone for someone else. 

“Oh,” Drew murmured, a sharp contrast from the boisterous voice he’d spoken in just moments before. “That must have been difficult for them. To think all of their children were dead.”

Shea crossed her arms, doing her best to will away the tears that threatened to form. She was really gonna do something awful if she kept getting this close to crying over things she’d made herself numb to years ago. “Yeah, well, it might’ve been better if we had been.” 

“You don’t mean that.” He started to reach a hand out towards her, hesitated, then let it drop back to the table. “Shea, you don’t really mean that,” he repeated. 

“I know I don’t really mean- It’s just that- ugh!” She threw her arms up, then immediately crossed them back over her chest. Despite herself, she grumbled, voice thick around the lump in her throat, “if it was really so hard for them they would have still loved us when we woke up.”

Glaring at the table, she immediately started to wish she could take back those words before Drew had the chance to respond. She didn’t want his pity, and she didn’t want him to try and comfort her or anything. If they were going to be friends she needed to know for sure that he wasn’t her friend for any reason other than that he wanted to be. She also figured that to try and get him to ignore it would only make things worse. So, she waited wordlessly for him to say something. 

She expected some over the top reaction about how her family would always love her, or some sympathetic ‘oh you poor thing’ nonsense that would drive her insane. What he said, instead, was, “I suppose that’s true. Um… I’d wager a guess to say you don’t want to talk about it, right?” She squeezed her eyes shut and nodded. “If you ever change your mind… I’m. Well. I’m here. You know. Erm… Do you want to go see if the library’s got that movie you wanted, now?” 

Well, this was the kind of comforting she could handle. Point to Drew, she noted, for not pressing.

“Yeah, sure. They better have it, cause you have to prove you’re not a wimp.”

“I’m trying to be nice, here!” Drew protested, making a face at her. “What do you have to go and be so… so mean for?”

“I’m not mean, I’m a pest. Remember?”

“Nygh- gah- Shea! Just because you’re a pest doesn’t mean you have to be cruel!”

“Sorry,” She said, unapologetically. “Can we go now?”

“After we get the dishes put away.”

She stood, practically yanking his plate out of his hands as she grabbed it. “I got this. You go get your shoes on or whatever. I’m not letting you stall anymore than you already have.”

If Drew said something in response, which she was pretty sure he did, he said it too quietly for her to hear. She almost- almost!- chucked a plasma ball at his back, before deciding against it. It wasn’t worth the waste of energy unless she was entirely certain that he’d said something snarky. 

“You have seen this movie before, right?” He called from his bedroom, as she placed their dishes in the dishwasher.

“No, but it’s supposed to be really good.”

“Wait! How do you know it’s not all… gory then?” He asked, joining her in the kitchen.

“The reviews didn’t say anything about-”

“I told you already that I don’t like blood.”

“I know that! I don’t think it’s…” she paused as she took in just how nervous he actually looked. He kept lacing his fingers together, then pulling them apart again. His bottom lip looked about ready to start bleeding he was biting it so hard. “How about this? If it is gory- which it isn’t meant to be- you don’t have to watch all of it with me.”

“Why can’t we just choose something else? Something we know for sure isn’t awful?”

“I really want to see The Exorciser though! I already said you don’t have to keep watching if it’s too scary for you.”

“I’m not scared I-”

“Just don’t like blood,” Shea finished in unison with him.”Yeah, I know. Can we go now? Please?”

“If this is awful, I'm picking the next movie,” he grumbled, stalking past her and out the front door. Shea slammed the dishwasher shut and rushed out after him, pulling her own sneakers on as they walked towards the staircase.

“Does that mean if it’s great I get to pick the next movie too?”

“No, it means if it’s awful, I'm going to be sure to pick something you’ll hate. How does Mighty Martian Mind Mania: The Mighty Martian Movie sound to you?”

“You wouldn’t!”

“Oh, but I would,” Drew said in a mocking sing-song voice, leaning down so his face was just a few inches away from hers as he held the door to the building open for her.

 She brushed past him, trying to ignore the part of her mind that kept pointing out how close his face had been.“You are such a geek!”

“It is actually a good movie, you know.”

“Maybe to a geek.”

“They put Arckzeenum under mind control! And with him helpless to fight for the earth himself Xaelon and Zilao actually come close to total planetary domination.” He started bouncing with excitement as he talked. 

“You look like a puppy, bouncing like that,” Shea informed him, trying not to smile when he grinned at her. He really did look like a puppy, and she hated that she couldn’t deny that it made him look cute. “But isn’t the whole point that they’re- whatever they’re called, the martians- trying to take control of the earth? What’s the point of watching season after season of a show when you know the ending of every episode is going to be the same? They fail! Every time! Even in the movie. It’s always the same. I don’t get why anyone bothers to keep watching.”

“Well-I-but-gah! It’s just fun to see what ideas Xaelon will come up with to take over the earth, alright? And it’s fun to see how he and Zilao will get stopped.” 

If she rolled her eyes any further back in her head her mother would have appeared to lecture her about how they’d get stuck. Or well, she would have before. “No matter what ideas they come up with they get stopped. Why would they even keep trying after so much time?”

“They get close, sometimes. Xaelon actually managed to take over several other planets before, so it is possible that he could take over the earth.”

“But he doesn’t!”

“But he could! If it weren’t for Nikolai accidentally disrupting the mind control in the movie they never would have been stopped.”

“Ugh.” Shea shuddered. “Mind control.”

“What? Is mind control too geeky for Miss Cool?” 

“Miss Cool?” Shea scoffed, looking up at Drew.

He shrugged. “I never claimed to be good with words.”

“You can say that again.”

“Zip it.”

“And, yeah, for one thing, it is super geeky. But it’s also just really creepy.”

“Oh?” Drew nudged her shoulder with his, and she tried to ignore the way her whole arm started to tingle. “And what? It scares you?”

“Yeah, right. I don’t scare,” she said, shaking her head. “But I mean, have you ever really thought about the implications of mind control? It would be completely changing the reality of the person. You could do literally anything to them, make them do all sorts of horrible things, and they’d be less than helpless to stop it! At least wh- if someone tried to do something horrible to me I’d have the chance to fight, whether or not I could win.” Saying ‘if’ was a bit of a lie, but then, she knew there was no real way to explain some of the things that had happened to her without telling him the whole truth. The bruises that The Hunter left on her thigh throbbed. 

“What if it was for the better though?” He asked throwing his hands out in front of him, palms up, like that would somehow make his point for him. “Xaelon would be a pretty decent leader. It isn’t like he wants to kill everyone—in fact, he actually wants to improve things a great deal. But mostly he just wants the recognition of the other martians and the best way to get that is to take over the earth. It’s not like he hurt Arckzeenum by putting him under mind control, he just stopped him from getting in the way.”

“Listen I don’t even know who arck- whatever his name is- is. I don’t care if he’s the evilest, most vile creature in the universe. You have to be beyond evil to literally take away someone else's free will, no matter how good your intentions are.”

As invested as she’d been in their conversation, she hadn’t even realized that they’d reached the library. “Does that mean I don’t have to watch the movie?” he asked, as they walked inside. “You wouldn’t want to take away my free will, now would you?”

Shea smirked. “Who said I wasn’t evil?”

“Oh, please. You’re a brat, but I really don’t think you’re evil. ”

“You’re watching the movie. And if you keep trying to get out of it, I’ll make you watch the whole thing even if it’s the goriest movie I’ve ever seen.” 

She stalked off towards the movie section before he could respond, though his indignant “hey!” echoed throughout the library. She turned around just in time to watch his face turn bright red as three separate voices shushed him. She stifled a giggle and kept walking. 

He caught up to her a moment later grumbling, “pest,” under his breath. She glanced at him, to see him standing a half-step behind her with his arms crossed, glaring at the rows of VHS tapes as if they had personally offended him. 

“Quit pouting,” she laughed. He grunted then wandered off down the row, though she wasn’t sure if he was helping her look or if he was just trying to get away from her. 

“Maybe it’s not here,” Drew suggested, shuffling behind her again some fifteen minutes later. 

Unwilling to admit defeat, especially because she’d just been thinking the same thing herself, she said, “or maybe you hid it!”

He held his hands up and backed away as she turned to him. “I didn’t,” he protested. “Honest.”

“Swear it?”
“Sure, sure, I swear.”

“Yeah, alright maybe it’s not…” her voice trailed off as she spied a tape that had fallen between the bookshelves. She didn’t much believe in luck but if anything was lucky, this was it. At least she didn’t have to admit that he was right. “Here!” She finished, prying out a somewhat battered copy of The Exorciser. 

“Damn,” he muttered. “I really thought we would have to choose something else. I still have homework to do, so let's just get that and go.”

The same blonde girl as the day before was sitting at the desk. “Back again, Drew?” She asked. Her voice, high pitched to the point of being squeaky, instantly grated on Shea’s nerves, just as it had the last time. “I didn’t have you pegged as a horror kind of guy.” Shea rolled her eyes as the girl practically threw herself over the table, blinking in what she guessed was meant to be an attempt at fluttering her eyelashes or something. Ah yeah, that’s why she didn’t like the way she was looking at him last time. Her flirting was embarrassing even to Shea. “I’ve got a few that I’ve been too scared to watch on my own. Maybe you could watch them with me?”

For his part, Drew’s only real reaction was to blush and laugh awkwardly as he took a small, subtle step away. “I’m really not into horror, usually,” he confessed, rubbing the back of his neck. “Um. Are you ready to go?” He turned around, holding the tape out to her. 

After a moment, in which she realized he was either very unused to being flirted with (not that she could claim any experience at all) or he really did not like this girl, she shrugged and grabbed the movie from him. “Yeah, sure. You said you’ve still got work to do, and I want to watch this tonight, so let’s go.” He shot her a quick grateful smile, politely waved to the girl, then wrapped a hand around her arm and hurried her outside. 

“Thank you,” he sighed, letting go as soon as the doors closed behind them.

“Yeah, okay, no problem I guess. What was that about?”

He shook his head. “Nothing.”

“You know, I think I saw another movie that we should watch tonight too,” she mused, pretending to start back towards the library doors. 

“No! Shea!” He grabbed her arm again.  “Nngh- fine, just… Please.” 

She laughed, and followed him down the steps, overly aware of the rough calluses on his fingers as they touched the bare skin of her arm. “Spill.” He stammered for a moment, then fell silent without ever saying anything. “What? Are you afraid of a little flirting?”

“She’s not flirting with me,” he muttered. Unthinkingly, Shea snatched the glasses off his face. “Wha- give those back!” He let go of her arm, trying to grab them from her hands.

“Why? Clearly, you’re just as blind with them as you are without them.”

“Very funny, but I’d rather not be hit by a car if you don’t mind,” he spat, as she handed them over. “And she isn’t flirting with me. Not really, at least.”

“Yeah, okay, Sir Dork, she’s not flirting with you. Why’s that?” 

“She was in one of my classes this past spring.”

“So?”

“So,” he continued pointedly, “we worked together on a project, and I…” 

“Spit it out or I turn around.”

“You know, I can still lock you out of the apartment.”

“No, you can’t! I have a key now, remember?” Just to prove her point she reached into her pocket and dangled the key off her fingertip, twirling out of his reach when he tried to grab at it. “Tell me or I’ll turn around and invite her to watch the movie with us. Something tells me she’d just love that.”

He rattled off the rest of the story so quickly she almost missed it. “We worked on a project together and one night I invited her back to my dorm room cause I thought she really was flirting with me, but when we got there she was just trying to get to my grade book to change her older brothers grades, because they’re on a joint scholarship and he’s not doing so well, and when I caught her she freaked out and-” He cut himself off, pulling in a breath and glancing at her as if only just remembering who he was speaking to. “Offered to… um… well, to make up for it.” 

“You do realize that I didn’t lie about my age, right?”

The tips of his ears turned pink, and he scuffed his shoe against the ground. “You’re still just a kid. A fairly sheltered one at that, from my understanding.” 

In a way, she supposed what he said was true enough that she couldn’t correct him, although she wasn’t sure sheltered was exactly the right word for it. She didn’t imagine most sheltered kids were forcibly woken up at four in the morning to go stop some crazy bird guy across town. Then again, she couldn’t really say she wasn’t sheltered when the last time she’d spoken to someone her own age was when she was fourteen and yelling at a group of high school students to run before they got hit during a huge fight between Team Go and a band of villains- Shea still didn’t understand how they had met. Still, she wasn’t some innocent little goody-two-shoes kid who was too pure to have ever thought about sex. Just cause she was kind of a freak didn’t mean she wasn’t a- well, mostly- normal teenager. And even if she hadn’t really thought about sex, because truth be told she’d deemed it unimportant for her lifestyle and never really invested much time in the concept, it wasn’t as if she’d never even heard of it before. 

“So, did you have sex with her or not?” She willed away any sense of embarrassment she’d normally feel at those words, instead taking a fair bit of pride in how quickly his entire face turned so red that it bordered on purple. 

“I-ye-n-well-but. Stop that!”

“Use your words, Drew.”

“I said stop that!”

“Didn’t answer my question though.”

“It’s none of your business, I’ll have you know!”

“Jeez, okay. Go, Drew. Did you at least change her brothers’ grade after that?”

“I didn’t have sex with her,” he blurted before his eyes went wide. He promptly buried his face in his hands, mumbling, “that’s why she’s still trying to flirt with me. Her brother’s failing my summer course now, too.” When he finally pulled his hands away from his flushed face, he passed his glasses over to her. “Hold these.”

“Why?”

“I changed my mind about not wanting to be hit by a car. I’m going to go wander into traffic now, and it will quite likely work out better for me if I’m blind.”

“Oh for- put these back on, you big baby.” She tried to push his glasses back into his hands, and when he didn’t take them she impulsively grabbed the collar of his shirt and pulled him down so she could place them back on his stupid cute face herself. Not that his face was cute. Stupid, sure, but not cute. She was so not going to allow herself to be the girl who had a crush on the first guy who was nice to her. No way. She was meant to be tough, not some heart-doodling, baby-naming, lovesick schoolgirl. 

There was an awkward moment, once his glasses were back on, in which they awkwardly blinked at each other, his face pulled even closer to hers than it had been when he’d teased her about Mighty Martian when they had first left the building.

She gave him a shove, rough enough to send him stumbling back a step, and forced a laugh, “I’m the kid, but you’re the one about to walk into traffic over talking about sex.”

“Just- you-stop it! You are a kid! You shouldn’t be asking- you shouldn’t even be thinking- and I- ugh!” Drew threw his arms in the air and rushed inside the apartment building as his face began to flush once more. He held the door for her, impatiently tapping his foot as she sauntered in after him. 

“How old do I have to be then, Drew? To start… thinking?” She placed a hand on his chest (deliberately ignoring the flutters that caused in her own) and tried to put as much of a sultry tone, the one she’d heard women use on idiotic men for information in some spy films, into her voice as she could. She figured it sounded kind of dumb, unpracticed at the very least, but Drew’s beady eyes went wide behind his glasses, and he jerked away from her. She could see how tense every muscle in his back was as he marched up the stairs in front of her. Part of her was glad she hadn’t, but she began to wish she had winked at him too. Just to see his reaction, of course. Actually, could she even wink? She wasn’t sure. Either way, it was probably for the best that she hadn’t. He didn’t speak the whole way up, and she figured she had annoyed him enough.

“I need to go do my homework,” he declared. He tossed his keys onto the counter haphazardly, not bothering to turn around when they slid off and onto the floor with a jingle and a clatter. A second later she heard his door click shut. 

With an annoyed huff, Shea collapsed onto the chair. This whole thing wasn’t going to work out well if he was going to get this frustrated every time she teased him a little bit. She grabbed her book, realizing he didn’t plan sitting with her to do his homework as the music began to quietly play from his room. Gah! He was such a baby. Whatever, if he wanted to get embarrassed and angry, that was his own problem, she decided. She wasn’t just going to stop acting like herself for him. She’d had enough of pretending to be someone she wasn’t for one lifetime. And if he didn’t like it, well, she supposed he could technically kick her out. She wasn’t upsetting him that much though… was she? 

With a slightly queasy feeling in her stomach that she hadn’t felt in nearly a decade, and now had felt twice in one day, Shea forced herself to stop thinking and read her book. As much as she liked it, it was a bit difficult to focus through her worried thoughts. She’d managed only three chapters when Drew finally reemerged from his room, dropping a stack of papers unceremoniously onto the coffee table. 

“Read this for me, would you?” he asked, nudging the top paper in her direction. She felt her nervousness wash away as he spoke. He sounded calm, and when she looked at him she saw him reclining on the couch, his glasses resting on his chest as his head lolled backward. So, she definitely hadn’t annoyed him to the point of kicking her out. Not that she’d really thought he would, of course. 

“You spelled your name wrong,” she said.

His eyes snapped open and he jolted upright. “Plea- Wait, my name isn’t even on that!” He groaned as she laughed, and flopped back down onto the couch. “You are such a pest, Shea.”

“It’s what you keep me around for.”

“I keep you around to catch real mistakes.”

“There is just no way that dextrorotatory is a real world.”

“It is. It means-”

She quickly cut him off. “Just get me your textbook or something so I can actually make sure you spelled it right.”

“Pest,” he grumbled again, though he immediately stood to do as she asked. Shea couldn’t help but smile when he turned away from her, not that she let him see her doing so when he passed the oversized book over. Okay, so, he was kind of cute. In a super dorky kind of way. That didn’t have to mean anything, she decided. It wasn’t like she was going to start doodling ‘Shea Lipsky’ everywhere or start naming their future children. He was cute, and that was that. She didn’t have a crush on him because of it. She just wasn’t blind. 

“I’m impressed. You actually managed to spell it right.”

“You do realize I am in graduate school right? I’m only a few years away from receiving my doctorate. I’m dyslexic, not stupid.”

“Sor-ry, Doc. I forgot you were older than me on account of the fact that you’re a wimp.”

Drew crossed his arms, glaring at her. “Do you even know how to speak without sass?”

“Oh look, you spelled ‘spectroscopy’ wrong.”

“Well, I’m sure you find that just delightful.”

“Course I do.” She shrugged. “I’d be out of a job if you could spell.”

“Yes, well. At least I know what dextrorotatory means.”

“Yeah, okay, Drew. Tell me one time I’m ever going to need to know that.”

Sighing, he uncrossed his arms. “Fair enough, I suppose. Do you like popcorn?”

“Sure. You making some?”

“Not now, but I figured we could forego dinner if we’re going to be watching… that.”

“Well isn’t that brave of you!” 

“Could you just be nice?” He demanded. 

“Sorry.” She rewrote another misspelled word, then dropped the pen and held up a flaming hand. “All my nice blood burned away.”

“Brat!”

She glanced up at him as he glared at her. Oh yes, she decided, making him watch The Exorciser was going to be one of the best decisions she’d made since running away. She smirked and passed his homework back to him. 

 “I’ll make another deal with you.”

He blinked wearily at her, inching further away on the couch. “What?”

“If you can make it the entire movie without screaming, crying or trying to get out of watching it, I will be the nicest person you’ve ever met, for a whole day.”

“And if I don’t?”

“Then nothing. I get to keep being me, and you get to know that you’re a crybaby.” 

Drew glanced between her and the tv, gulped and stuck out his hand. “Deal,” he squeaked. Shea grinned and smacked her hand into his. This? This was going to be fun.

Chapter Text

Even the popcorn that Drew made came from some strange off-brand company displaying only “POPCORN” in big red letters on an otherwise white box. When he walked the oversized bowl to the coffee table, his hands shook so much that she was relatively shocked he didn’t drop the whole thing. She elected not to comment on the few pieces that did tumble to the ground, figuring she’d have much better material to mock him with, soon enough.

“Ready to lose?”

“I’m not scared,” he lied for the umpteenth time, his voice quivering. “Besides, I am far too curious to see what happens when you try to be nice to lose.” 

Shea scoffed and grabbed a handful of popcorn, warily popping a few kernels into her mouth before deciding it tasted fine enough and devouring the rest. The excessive amounts of butter distracted from the almost cardboard-like texture. She moved to the window, drawing the zig-zag striped curtains shut, blocking out the city lights and starless night sky.

“Turn off the lights,” she instructed, half-expecting Drew to have run off as she turned around. He still stood between the chair and the light switch, nervously lacing and unlacing his fingers. The look he shot between her and the overhead light was as terrified and pleading- maybe even more so- than the look he’d shot her when the girl at the library began to flirt with him. “Well?”

He scowled at her, then flicked the light off and ran to the couch. Shea sat down next to him, ready to make him regret ever agreeing to watch this with her, by whatever means she had to. She didn’t want to feel so… hero-ish again by being forced to act nice. What had been so great about being around him so far was that she didn’t feel like she had to be, well, fake. Not that she couldn’t be nice, of course. 

As she sat, something about his pajamas, mostly covered by a soft blue blanket that he’d dragged out of his room and wrapped around himself, caught her eye. She yanked the blanket back a bit to see them better, ignoring his startled yelp and the way he tried to swat her hands away.

“Of course,” she laughed. “Of course you own Elements of Robotics pajamas.”

“It was a good show!”

“Are you so sure? It only got… what? Eight episodes?”

Immediately Drew turned, eyeing her suspiciously. “Why do you know that?”

Overly—well, protective wasn’t the right word—overly involved parents meant she’d learned to lie on the spot, and she quickly spat out, “Um… four brothers. Remember?”

He shook his head. “No way. I don’t believe you. You watched it! Didn’t you?”

Shea snapped her head around, stubbornly staring straight ahead. “No.”

She felt him nudge her arm just a moment before asking, “What did you think about the episode on artificial intelligence?”

“Shut up.”

“It was my favorite.”

She barely resisted the childish urge to cover her ears and drown him out by sheer stubborn will power. “Just turn on the movie,” she demanded, hoping he couldn’t hear the pleading note in her voice the way she could.

He continued as if she’d never spoken. “What did you think about-”

“I just watched it for the explosions, okay?” She snapped, her voice rising to just quieter than a shout. She nearly slapped a hand over her mouth, before realizing he didn’t need any more proof that he’d managed to get an embarrassing confession out of her. Damn him and that damn nerd show. Of course , it had to always be on right after late-night missions. And of course it had to have actual real explosions- the ones in movies just seemed absurd to her. It had been kinda cool to see her experiences with things blowing up in her face recreated. While she did initially watch it just to see things blow up, her favorite episode, not that she’d admit it to him even if her life depended on it, had also been the episode on artificial intelligence. Naturally, the only episode without even one explosion. 

He had a death wish, she decided, as he leaned so close to her that she could practically feel his breath on the side of her face. “Dork,” he whispered. 

A short scream burst out of her and she pushed him away. “Shut up !” 

He tumbled off the couch with a startled cry. She hadn’t meant to push him that hard but the sight of the stupid grin still plastered to his face when he looked up almost made her wish she’d pushed him harder. “You know, I have the series taped. We could watch that.”

She snapped her gaze to his. “Trying to get out of something?”

He sobered up, the smile dropping from his face in an instant. “No. No, I just meant-”

Shea snorted, glad the focus was no longer on trying to embarrass her. “Turn on the movie, Drew.” Grumbling incoherently, he stood and did as she told him to, the blanket wrapped around his shoulders like a cape. In the dim lighting, she could just barely see the tips of his ears turning pink. 

Twenty minutes into the movie she glanced over at him a bit surprised that he hadn’t already started freaking out, though nothing had actually happened. He had, however, pulled his knees to his chest and wrapped his arms protectively around himself. He looked about ready to start sucking his thumb. 

She nudged him and asked, “how’re you holding up?” He only grunted in response and she let loose the laugh she’d tried holding back. “It’s not horrible .”

Drew turned to face her, glaring at her like he wished he could kill her with his mind. “Not yet ,” he spat bitterly. 

She patted his head, then quickly withdrew her hand as she remembered how soft his hair had felt between her fingers that morning. “You’ll live.”

“Says you,” he grunted, shifting away from her touch. 

She jabbed a finger into his ribs. “Baby.”

“ Ow! Stop that!” Shea tried and failed miserably not to giggle.

“You could always just give in now, and get out of the really scary parts.” Not that she actually wanted him to. She knew that what she really wanted was his company, but she tried to convince herself that she just wanted to watch him panic.

“Nygh- no .” He turned and pointed a finger at her accusingly. “I’m not letting you win just like that. I’m not letting you out of this.”

She shrugged, feigning nonchalance. “Suit yourself. But don’t say I didn’t give you the chance.” She leaned over to poke him again.

He slapped her hand away before she could reach him. “Stop poking at me, would you?”

“Probably not gonna happen, chief. It’s fun.”

“At least you being a pest keeps me distracted,” he muttered under his breath, and without another word, Shea decided to stop talking to him. She did poke him again though, which earned her another sharp, “ow!” before he scooched as far towards the opposite end of the couch as he could. “ Quit it! ”

Nearing the end of the movie Shea began to worry that maybe the bet wasn’t such a good idea after all. Aside from a few decidedly unmanly squeaks, Drew still hadn’t really freaked out. Shea had expected something more from him and it took her a moment of watching him to realize that he was clearly trying very hard to hold back his reactions. Even in the dark, she could see how much he was shaking.

Debating whether or not saying something to freak him out would be cheating, she turned away before he could notice her watching him. She needn’t have worried, she realized no more than ten seconds later. She’d seen the jump scare coming since before they even turned the movie on but, apparently, Drew hadn’t. His barely calm facade shattered to pieces as he screeched and jumped so high in the air that he toppled over the side of the couch and collapsed to the floor in a trembling mess of limbs and blanket. Not at all bothering to stifle her laughter she shifted over to his abandoned spot to peer down at him.

“Not afraid, huh?”

She expected him to glare at her, but he didn’t so much as look in her direction. Instead, he wrapped the blanket around his head and whimpered, “Can we turn it off now? Please?” 

“If only I’d wagered something better than just not having to be nice to you,” she mused. He tightened the blanket around his head and whimpered again, as the characters in the movie shrieked. “Come on, Drew, it’s not that scary.” She reached down, intent on grabbing his arm and dragging him back up onto the couch. The moment her fingertips touched the blanket he yelped and scrambled away from her, ducking behind the back of the couch. She turned again and watched him, the blaring movie and his heavy breathing the only sounds in the room. His chest moved under the blanket with each heaving breath and, somewhere between unable and unwilling to stop herself, she burst into a fit of giggles. When she finally regained control of herself, she pulled the blanket away from his face then held her hand out to him.

“Come on,” she said, “it’s almost over. You did better than I expected you to, at least.”

He didn’t take her outstretched hand. “Oh, yes. That’s ever so comforting.”

“Come on,” she insisted, grabbing at his blanket. 

He made a strange sound in the back of his throat, brushed her hand away and finally clambered back onto the couch, his blanket wrapped so thoroughly around him once again, that she could only just see his glasses peeking out. She absentmindedly wondered if he could actually breathe.

“I hate this,” he grumbled, his voice muffled.

“Cause you’re scared?” He shifted slightly but his attempts to glare at her only served to make her snicker. “You look ridiculous.” 

“I hate this,” he repeated.

“It’s almost over, you dork. Be quiet.”

She could tell he was trying to cross his arms under the blanket but he’d wrapped it too tightly to move. “I hate you ,” he grumbled. 

A painful knot formed in her chest, which she stubbornly tried to ignore. “No, you don’t.” She hated that she could hear herself working, not to convince him, but herself. 

He sighed, and let the blanket slide down enough to cross his arms. “No. But I do hate this.”

“It’s almost over,” she said again, the teasing tone in her voice replaced by the same comforting sort of tone she’d frequently used on Wendell and Westley, and sometimes even Merrick, on shots days, during their stint as lab rats. Only when she glanced over at Drew again did she notice that she’d reached over and rested a hand on his arm. She quickly pulled away. Someone in the movie screamed out and Drew squeaked and practically leaped over to her side of the couch to bury his face against her shoulder. 

Berating herself all the while, she allowed him to lean into her, wrapping her arm awkwardly around his shoulder. Evidently, he didn’t care at all about the stiff-set of her back or that she’d been moving away from him just a moment before, because he stayed there, grabbing tightly to her free arm every time a loud noise came from the tv set, for the entirety of the last twenty minutes of the movie. 

She could hardly focus past the weight of his head on her shoulder and how warm he felt against her side. She wanted to squirm away from him, not used to being touched by anyone, let alone some vaguely cute college guy, in a way that wasn’t intended to hurt or, as was the case much more often lately, kill her. And truth be told, she wasn’t used to touching anyone in a way that could possibly be taken as comforting. At the same time, she couldn’t help but remind herself that she’d wanted this the night before. Well, not this , exactly, she thought as he grabbed at her arm again, his hands shaking, but she had wanted him to move closer. Hell, all truth be told, she knew part of the reason she’d been so insistent on him watching this movie with her had been the knowledge that something like this might happen. Somewhere in the deepest recesses of her mind she vaguely wished that she was the one who was scared of the movie, enough for him to have to comfort her instead. That thought went deliberately unacknowledged. 

When the movie finally ended, Shea peeled the blanket back away from Drew’s head. “Turns out you’re just as much of a baby as I thought,” she teased.

He didn’t move or respond in any way outside of a grunted, “mmph.”

“And,” she let her voice turn sing-songy, “it turns out I have absolutely no obligation to be nice to you whatsoever.” 

He pulled far enough away to look up at her. “You wouldn’t have known how to be nice.”

“Well, you go ahead and believe that,” she scoffed. “I’ve got nothing to prove to you.”

He sat back, regarding her carefully as if he wasn’t still trembling. “Not that you’d be able to.” 

“Course I could.”

“Well, do it then,” he challenged. 

“What? Prove that I can be nice to you?”

“Yeah.” He leaned in close enough that she could smell the buttery, salty, smell of popcorn on his breath. His tone was mocking despite the slight quivering threat of tears still evident in his voice. “Prove it.”

She tried not to blush as she issued a challenge of her own. “You’re gonna have to make me.”

“Why? Can’t prove it on your own?”

“Win a bet and make me prove I can be nice, dork.” 

“You are such-”

She cut him off, delighting in the glare he shot her way. “A pest?”

“Nngh- zip it! ” 

Laughing, Shea made to stand up. “Anyway, I’m going to bed before you decide to fall asleep out here again.” Before she had the chance to move, Drew’s eyes had gone wide and he’d latched both hands to her wrist. She blinked at him, a little shocked by the fact that she hadn’t been startled enough to punch him. “What?”

“Please, don’t leave,” he squeaked.

It took her a few seconds to realize what he’d asked her, and a few seconds more for the surprise to wear off. “What, are you scared of being alone?”

“Nygh- yes,” he confessed, glancing away from her, though he didn’t let go of her wrist.

“Didn’t you say you hate me like… twenty minutes ago?” He started sputtering trying to deny that he’d said it, or at least denying that he’d meant it, which she’d known already. Still, it was kind of fun making him squirm.  “Okay, okay. Don’t hurt yourself.” She sat down again, and he finally relinquished his grasp. “I’m only staying for five more minutes though.” 

After a minute passed in complete silence, he asked, “Do you… do you think demons could really possess people?”

Holding up a burning hand she shrugged and said, “Sure. It happened to me.”

“Not funny!”

“What?” She moved closer, bringing her burning hand as close to him as she was willing to without fear of accidentally hurting him. “You don’t think it’s cool anymore?”

He slapped her arm away, for the second time that night. “Stop that .”

She smirked, but let her hand fall to her side, leaning back against the armrest of the couch. “Yeah, alright. And, no, Drew, I don’t think demons can possess people. Mostly because they’re not real.”

“But what if they were?” She could picture him as a toddler suddenly, with glasses too big for his tiny face and ears that he’d never actually grow into, following her around asking ‘why?’ about everything, doing nothing more than repeating the word when given an answer.

She shrugged off the thought that he’d probably been an adorable little kid. “Who cares? They’re not.” She interrupted herself with a yawn, evidently more tired than she thought she was. “Problem solved. You’re never going to get possessed.” Rather than seeming at all relieved by her attempts at reassurance, he just groaned and hid his face against her shoulder again. “What do you want me to say?” She demanded, growing increasingly flustered by how close he was, and increasingly annoyed at herself for being flustered. Weren’t teenage girls supposed to like cuddling up with college guys? Gah! Even that word… cuddling … sounded wrong in her mind. 

“I don’t know ,” he moaned.

“We could go buy a ouija board and see what happens.”

He pulled back, wrapping the blanket over his shoulders. “Do you hate me?”

She cocked an eyebrow at him. “Not unless you plan on giving me a reason to?” She didn’t mean for it to come out as a question, but it did.

“Then why are you torturing me ?”

“I didn’t leave, did I? I could be doing a lot worse.” He stared at her in level silence for a brief moment, then did nothing but pull the blanket up over his head and lean towards the other side of the couch like a pouting child. “Can I go to bed now?”

He turned around fast enough she felt her own spine popping in protest. “No!” 

Sighing, she curled up against the arm of the couch. “Fine. But gimme.” She reached for his blanket which, after persistently trying to yank it off of him herself, he begrudgingly disentangled himself from, and passed a portion of it over. Content enough for the moment she decided she’d save stealing the rest of it for when he said something dumb.

“You’re not going to make me watch more horror movies, right?”

Shea yawned again. “Not right now .”

“But,” he stammered. “But does that mean you will?”

She patted his head, for the second time that evening. The only difference being she left her hand to tangle up in his hair. “You’ll get used to it.” With her free hand, she reached for the coffee table, grabbed the remote and clicked the tv off, plunging the room into darkness. 

Some small portion of her noticed him moving closer as he muttered, somewhere between sounding mocking and upset, “you must hate me.” 

“I don’t,’ she yawned, her eyes closing, despite her efforts not to let them. She’d never been quite so… cozy before. There was something discomfiting about it, at the same time that she hated the idea of it ever ending. It made her stomach queasy to think about, so she forced herself not to. If she had any talent at all, it was forcing herself not to think about things. She shifted so she was lying more comfortably, her head on the armrest. 

Drew, who she could just about make out leaning his own head against the back of the couch as he had the previous night, finally yawned too. “Then you really are just a brat.” Shea grabbed the pillow that barely functioned to separate them and swung it at his face. She was met with an immediate protest of, “ow! Hey! Glasses .”

Shea laughed out an apology, then sat up and snatched them off his face. “Here,” she said and promptly hit him again.

“That’s not better!” He fumbled at her arms, trying to grab his glasses which she tauntingly held just out of his reach. “Give me those!”

She slipped his glasses on her face, trying to peer around the apartment. The darkness didn’t hinder the fact that her vision went incredibly blurry the moment they were on. “Sheesh, you are blind .” 

“Yes,” he exclaimed, as she took them off again. With her vision back she could see him squinting at her. “Shockingly, I’m aware.” He held out his hand, trying to be demanding in a way that did nothing but make her think that he was both ridiculous and adorable. “Give.”

She passed them over, and watched as he deliberated between putting them on, or just keeping them off. He finally decided to keep them off, tucking them into his pajama shirt instead. “Should you be going to bed?” Shea asked, remembering suddenly that he’d have to go to class tomorrow and she’d be on her own for who knew how long. 

He glanced, still squinting, in her direction. “Well- I-I… Yes,” he stammered nervously.

“What time do you leave anyway?”

“Eight, if I want to catch the bus.”

“Drew! It’s-” she glanced quickly at the clock, “one in the morning! Go to bed!”

He stuck his glasses back on his face to properly glare at her. “You expect me to sleep after that?”

“Yes! Go to bed, you baby.”

“No,” he whined, throwing a glance between her and the hallway. “It’s too dark.”

“Do you need a nightlight or something? Just go!”

He latched one hand onto her arm again. “No!”

The blush she’d forced away earlier finally surfaced, which was a little closer to okay now that it was hopefully too dark for him to see. “Are you for real?”

“I-nygh- I just.” He sighed and, squeezing her arm managed, “Please, stay.”

“Oh, for- What? You want me to sleep out here?”

Her eyes had adjusted just enough for her to make out the sheepish look on his face as he nodded. “Please?”

She paused then after brief but intense consideration of what he was asking, she shrugged. “Um, okay. I guess. Just-”

His relieved sigh, and somewhat giddy “thank you!” interrupted her.

“Right. Sure. Just… move over.” Slowly he lifted his hand off her arm and shifted over to lie down on the opposite armrest. Shea curled her legs close to her chest, immediately uncomfortable with the feeling of his so close to hers. “What class do you have tomorrow?” She asked, trying to distract herself from the thought that she was about to intentionally sleep on the couch with him. 

He yawned, making her yawn in response. “I have to cover a lesson for intro to synthetic chemistry. Then I’ve got a programming course and robotic engineering.” 

She decided she’d ask him exactly what the hell synthetic chemistry was at some other point. What she asked instead was, “what time will you be back?”

“Why? You gonna miss me?” Drew teased.

She kicked her foot out towards him, though gently enough that it wouldn’t even have hurt a baby bird. “You said we’d go get clothes for me, you dork.”

“Oh, yeah. I’m usually back around three. Groceries first. Then we’ll get you some clothes. You won’t mind going to a thrift store, right?”

“Fine for everything but underwear,” she said with a shrug.

She could practically hear him blushing when he replied, “oh. Yes. Right.”

Some part of her mind kicked her every time she nearly managed to drift to sleep, terrified by the implications of staying with him. Before she even knew she was going to do it, she muttered, “hey. Question.” Drew hummed in response. “What should I do about lunch tomorrow?”

She scarcely made out his telling her that there were leftovers if she wanted them, his voice had turned to such a low, sleepy grumble. “Or you could make a sandwich. I’m sure you’re not so bad a cook that you can’t handle that.”

Childishly, she stuck her tongue out, unsure whether he’d see it or not. “Nyeh.”

He nudged her leg with his foot, the way she’d done to him. “And you say you’re not a kid.”

“ Technically , I’m a teenager. So, not a kid. And so says the guy who needs a nightlight !” 

“Nygh. Weren’t you the one who wanted me to go to bed?”

“This isn’t a bed. It’s a couch. If you want to sleep go to bed.” He sat up slightly, her name bubbling off his lips in protest. She held back a tired laugh. “You better not wake me up because you’re having a nightmare or something. And take off your glasses before you roll over and break them!”

He lay back down, obeying her command and placing his glasses on the coffee table. “I make no promises about not waking you up. If I do , you brought it on yourself.”

“Baby.”

“Good night , Shea.”

Shea snuggled down against the couch, and murmured, “yeah, night,” unsure why she suddenly felt so content to allow herself to fall asleep.

She’d nearly drifted off when Drew whispered, “Shea?”

She responded with a bleary, “mm? Wha’?”

“Thank you for… staying.”

Immediately her face flushed, flustered by a single grateful comment. “Yeah, well, um… I guess I kinda owed you, you know. Thanks for watching the movie with me.” Strange that she saved the lives of citizens of Go City constantly and the most grateful comment she’d received in the last few years were skeevy compliments about her looks, and yet here was Drew, genuinely thanking her for just… being there.

He must have felt as awkward as she did receiving thanks because he immediately began to stammer. “Sure, of course. No problem. A deals a deal. Thanks for choosing something not horribly gory. Even if it was still horrible.”

“Yeah, sure. Go to sleep, Drew.”

“Right. Night.”

“Night,” she repeated, before drifting off into a content and cozy sleep, mostly unaware of the small smile plastered to her face. 

Chapter Text

The first thing Shea heard when she, not yet fully conscious, began sitting up the next morning was Drew saying, “I’m sorry. I was trying not to wake you.”

She blinked and glanced exhaustedly around the room, finally spying him standing in the kitchen. “Whatever,” she grunted, rubbing at her eyes with one balled-up fist. “What time is it?”

“Quarter to eight. Want some?” he asked. She had to squint, her vision clouded by sleep, to see him holding up a piece of toast. 

She shrugged. “Sure.” Her back popped pleasantly as she stood and stretched her arms up over her head. “Surprised you didn’t start crying and wake me up in the middle of the night.” 

He shot a quick glare in her direction, before turning his attention to the toaster. “Give me some credit, Shea. I am an adult after all.”

“Tell that to the version of you that screamed and fell off the couch last night.”

Apparently, he’d elected to ignore her. “Do you want jelly?” 

“Sure.” She stifled a yawn, a little surprised she didn’t feel more awkward about the previous nights’ couch sharing. 

“You know,” Drew began, as he slathered strawberry jelly onto her piece of toast, “the more I think about it the more I think there must be something wrong with you that makes you enjoy watching movies like that.”

She hopped onto the counter and scoffed. “Yeah, it’s called not being a baby.”

“Or you’re crazy,” he said, passing the toast over to her.

“Wonder what that means for you.”

Shea watched as his face paled considerably in almost a singular instant. “Nygh— anyways. ”

“It’s any way ,” she corrected.

“What?”

“There’s no ‘s’,” she explained, though not without a hint of mockery. “It’s any way , not any ways .” 

He rolled his eyes at her lecture and sighed out, “Yes, sure, fine. Any way, what are you planning to do while I’m gone?”

She shrugged again. “Don’t know. I might snoop through your stuff. Steal your TV and run?”

“Shea!” Drew sputtered. “You… you’re not really going to, right?”

“I’d have to be really dumb to leave now,” she scoffed. “I’ll wait until after I get you to buy me clothes, at least.” He whined her name again and after a moment of staring blankly at his distressed expression, she snickered. “Re lax . I’ve got books, can watch some TV… I will probably snoop around your room though.”

“Don’t be such a pest.”

“I’m kidding .”

“You’d better be,” he warned, pointing a finger in her face. “There’s nothing even worth snooping for.”

“Well, now you’re just trying to tempt me.”

“I am not!”

Shea finished the last bite of her toast as he stammered out his protests then shoved his shoulder to shut him up. “Don’t give yourself a stroke there, sport. Shouldn’t you be going?”

Drew glanced at the clock, let out a strangled sort of sound, and hurried out of the kitchen, disappearing into his bedroom only to return a moment later haphazardly shoving books into a backpack.

As he rushed out the door he glanced at her, still swinging her legs on top of the counter, and called back, “You will be fine on your own, yeah?”

She nodded at him, and said with a false sort of innocence, “Don’t worry, Drew. I’m a big girl. I can handle being on my own for a lil bit.”

“Okay,” he said, “um… good? Bye.” And then the door slammed shut, and he was gone, and she was, for the first time in days, well and truly alone. 

She’d gotten used to the feeling of being alone in Go Tower - so she’d thought. But knowing it was unlikely that someone would burst in to demand she stopped what she was doing and go save the city from whatever gimmicky moron was trying to take over that day felt… different. She realized, staring at the cabinets on the other side of Drew’s kitchen, that she wasn’t at all used to the feeling of being alone. Not without the added feeling of being watched. For the first time in longer than she could properly remember she could do something she wasn’t meant to and actually get away with it. How weird.

She finally hopped off the counter, and with that thought in mind, made a beeline for Drew’s room. As long as she didn’t mess anything up, he’d never know. She could just go into his room and he wouldn’t even know. She had already twisted the knob halfway when she paused. Sure, maybe he wouldn’t know, but she would. Part of her insisted that she open his door, not even to go in, just to prove that she could do something she wasn’t meant to and get away with it. A moment later she found herself wandering back to go sit on the couch. Drew’s bedroom door remained unopened. 

She breezed through the rest of the book she’d been reading the day before. To her surprise, less than an hour had passed since Drew left. She sighed and fell to her back on the couch. None of the other books appealed to her at the moment, which worried her. She’d never… not wanted to read before. She loathed the idea that she’d enjoyed reading so much during the last few years because, in large part, it had been rebellious. Or maybe because the threat that at any moment she’d be forced to stop had encouraged her to read as fast and as often as possible. She forced herself to sit back up when she noticed she was nibbling on her lip - a habit she’d thought she’d killed long ago. She told herself how ridiculous she was being. She’d loved reading since she was little! Way before the comet! She was just… bored. She was bored. Something she hadn’t had the chance to be in years.

For a moment she impatiently tapped her foot against the floor, as if somehow that would make something happen. As if it would make Drew come back faster to entertain her. She nearly slapped herself for that. What was wrong with her? She didn’t need him. She didn’t need anyone. She shouldn’t even be… but she wanted to be there. She really did. She wasn’t gonna walk out. And she wasn’t actually going to steal his television either, as fun as it was to tell him she would. 

She snapped up the remote and was met with the still rolling credits from the previous nights’ movie. She groaned and stood to fiddle with the television set until she managed to get it off the VCR and onto live TV. 

And then she almost blasted Drew’s television to bits. Her heart raced in her chest, as picture after picture of her - well, pictures of Shego - flashed on the screen. Occasionally the images were joined by the scrolling headline announcing the superheroine had gone missing. She tasted bile rising in her throat as the channel nine newscasters began discussing her “kidnapping”. 

She knew it. She knew it! She knew they’d say she’d been kidnapped or something equally ridiculous. And she didn’t even care. She really didn’t. Except… she still couldn’t help worrying about what would happen to Drew. Maybe she really should go. It’s not like he’d miss her or anything. She certainly wouldn’t… yeah, okay. She had to roll her eyes at herself for that thought. She would so miss him but only cause he was actually nice to her. She didn’t like him or anything. She didn’t even really know that much about him. 

Well, she knew he was a baby and a dork. She knew he could cook, and started because he didn’t like his mother’s cooking. She knew he was dyslexic - she knew he was dyslexic when supposedly nobody else did. Did that mean something? It had to. What it meant, she couldn’t work out quite so easily. 

Shea buried her head in her hands. Soon enough, if they weren’t already, someone would start looking for her. She didn’t even know for sure how far from Go City she’d actually gotten. She hadn’t left the city since they first moved into Go Tower, none of them had. The places that existed on the outskirts of Team Go’s protection were deemed not worth knowing about, and she struggled to even think of names of the bordering towns. If she was just a town or two over, it probably wouldn’t take that long for someone to think to search the area. Then again, Go City was pretty big, and her parents probably didn’t know enough about her to realize that she would leave. Maybe… maybe it would take a while. Maybe they would give up before they even thought of searching this run-down city - wherever it was. 

Biting her tongue to stop herself from cursing out the newscasters, she changed channels. After five more channels talking about her disappearance, all of which seemed to have different theories about what happened to her, she finally managed to find a channel that wasn’t talking about her. Instead, she found reruns of some old cartoon, Scamper and Bitey . She’d never been much for the show when she was young, but she found some low-level relief in watching the exaggerated cat-and-mouse violence. It didn’t distract her from her worries, but it made thinking about it easier than the litany of “kidnapped”, “victim”, and “hope to find her soon” had.

She decided, as the cat - she didn’t know if it was Scamper or Bitey - slammed face-first into a painted brick wall, that she could at least warn Drew that people might be looking for her. She didn’t have to tell him why, necessarily, she just had to tell him.

“Oh yeah,” she muttered to herself. “Cause saying, ‘hey Drew, by the way, people are probably going to look for me and you might get accused of kidnapping’ is totally not something that’s gonna get me kicked out.” 

It took several deep breaths to get her glowing hands under control, after which she turned the TV off, slid her sneakers on and stuffed her keys in her pocket. She needed fresh air, and she needed it now . She made sure to lock the door behind her, then hurried down the steps and outside the building. The promise that she would have clothes soon enough had her brisk walk turning into a run before she’d even reached the end of the road.

Running through Go City had always been interesting - given the fact that she wasn’t actually allowed to. She really wondered how her parents hadn’t realized that attempting to lock her in her room would only lead to her getting out. It’s how she’d gotten out every time. It seemed counterintuitive to give your children spy training, then expect them to stay locked up when there were windows and air vents to sneak out of. Then again, Heath and Merrick had never tried to sneak out, as far as she was aware. And the twins were too young to realize that they shouldn’t have to live the way they did. They were too young to even realize that it wasn’t a good way to be living in the first place. 

It wasn’t like her parents weren’t aware that she snuck out. They yelled at her every time they found out. Once her father had even threatened to send her back to the lab. That had been just before she’d tried to burn up her plasma. Maybe, Shea figured, they’d thought she’d come back. She had every other time. But this hadn’t been just sneaking out to get a new book. And the fight with her parents hadn’t just been an argument. And she wouldn’t be going back, no matter who they sent after her. 

There was one thing that had been better about running through Go City that didn’t happen in… whatever this place was. She really needed to ask Drew. At least in Go City she knew where she was going. She kept trying to pick out landmarks to keep an eye out for when she turned around, but everything she saw slipped out of her mind before she properly registered any of it. Rather, they were pushed out by thoughts that matched pace with her while she ran. 

She stopped, pulling in labored breaths, when she realized she didn’t even remember what Drew’s building was called to ask for directions if she ended up needing them. Glancing around at the boarded-up windows and half-demolished buildings she figured she might not actually want to ask anybody around for directions in the first place. When sirens started up in the distance she started to panic. If there was some sort of monetary award for the person who found her a place as obviously as poor as this would be filled with people desperate enough to turn her in. With nothing left but instinct to rely on, she turned and booked it back to where she thought she came from. Suddenly, the people she hadn’t noticed before seemed to be everywhere, pointing at her, whispering, all of them rushing for phones to call the cops, or worse her, her parents. 

She figured out the way back to the apartment faster than she’d expected and she didn’t stop running until the door was securely locked behind her. The sirens still rang in her ears, even though she’d sprinted some five or six miles. For the first time in a long time she was more than a little grateful for superhuman abilities. 

With her back pressed against the door, she scanned Drew’s apartment for any sign of life outside of herself. Seeing nothing she allowed herself to sink down to her knees, trying to calm her breathing and wiping sweat from her eyes. A glimpse at the clock showed her she still had three more hours until Drew got back. She wondered if meeting him at the bus stop would be weird, then decided it would be. Besides, she had no idea which stop he’d even get off at. 

Her legs trembling with a combination of nerves and overexertion, she climbed to her feet. She grabbed the towel from her bedroom and shuffled into the bathroom. Putting her jeans and t-shirt from the other day back on didn’t appeal to her, but it was better than her, well, Drews, sweat-damp gym shorts and Mighty Martian shirt. She was in and out of the shower before it had even begun to get warm. 

The one good thing about her fading nerves was that throwing herself into the world of a novel was almost shockingly easy after her earlier struggle. She wanted nothing to do with anything on the television, or thoughts about what would happen to her… or Drew… when she was eventually found. Because believing it wouldn’t happen was ridiculous. So, she let the world slip away. Doing so came very close to proving to be a mistake when Drew came back. The opening door startled her so much that she nearly blasted him.

He either didn’t care about, or just didn’t notice, her glowing hands because he greeted her with a dopey grin and, “I see you didn’t steal my television.”

“Not yet,” she responded, quickly shoving her hands behind her. 

Dropping his bag on the counter with a heavy thud, he rolled his eyes. “Still might?”

“I told you I was at least going to wait until after you bought me clothes.”

“Oh, right. Speaking of, when do you want to go?”

“Whenever.” She didn’t want to go back out at all, actually. Not now. Not when she knew for sure that people were looking for her. Not when she knew it wouldn’t be safe for Drew. She could handle herself. She didn’t know how much she wanted to risk not being able to handle him, too. 

“Not a helpful answer, but alright,” he yawned and fell into the chair. “Get up to anything exciting while I was gone?”

“Not really,” she lied. Then, gulping, she decided she needed to just spit it out. “My parents are claiming I was kidnapped.”

To her surprise, he just chuckled, slumped lazily into the chair, and propped his feet up on the corner of the table. “Worried?” He spared her a quick glance before his eyes drifted shut behind his glasses

She stared at his relaxed posture, wondering if he understood the implications of what she’d said. “Not for me… The worst they can do to me is drag me back home,” she added before she could think to stop herself. 

“So, we’ll be sure to get you a sweatshirt or something.” He waved his hand dismissively. “Your skin color is gonna be the only thing people really remember. Cover your arms and you’re pretty much in the clear.”

She wasn’t so sure she agreed, but something about his strange, carefree attitude was rubbing off on her. “Yeah, well—just—I’m only telling you so you know you don’t get to blame me when the cops try and say you did it.” 

“I didn’t actually kidnap you. I’m just… harboring a fugitive. Besides, cops have always gone after innocent people, what difference does it make?” 

Something told her there was a story behind his evident distrust of cops, but she didn’t question it. He was a college student, he probably got accused of being high when he wasn’t or something else equally dumb and petty. She didn’t have it in her to point out that whatever it was probably didn’t come close to what being accused of kidnapping a superhero would - not in small part because confessing that she was a superhero was something she still hoped to avoid doing. 

“Okay, then, just… whatever, I guess.” That had been… easier than she’d expected. She tried not to let that worry her. “When do you normally get groceries?”
“Whenever.” Drew yawned again. “Though I guess with the extra stops… and I still have to do work... Eh, just… Half an hour and we leave.”

She scoffed quietly to herself as he somehow managed to contort his body into the singular most uncomfortable looking position she had ever been forced to witness. His face went slack, and while Shea didn’t trust that to mean he was actually asleep she decided to not bother him for now - only because she’d figured she would have been kicked out the second the idea of being accused of kidnapping was presented. She figured she at least owed him half an hour of peace for letting her stay after that. 

While his quiet snores filled the room, Shea realized she’d never eaten lunch, which she decided was to blame for the pit in her stomach, rather than any semblance of nerves - or worse - butterflies. Snooping through his fridge she found nothing particularly desirable, and she found herself munching on an apple out of habit. She’d have to ask Drew to add strawberries to the shopping list. 

The second half an hour passed, she decided it was high time she went back to bothering him. She almost chucked the apple core at the back of his head to wake him up, but forced herself to throw it in the trash can instead. She tried calling his name but, except for a slight twitch, he didn’t stir. That, she decided, gave her every right to move behind him and start tipping the, surprisingly light, chair backward. 

Drew woke up only as his feet lifted off the table. He made a noise somewhere between a shout and a squeak and flailed so violently that she came close to actually dropping him. She rapidly pushed the chair back up, and before he could turn around she leapt onto the counter and began innocently bouncing a plasma ball between her palms. 

“What did you do that for?” He demanded, gasping for air. Her gaze drifted lazily back towards him, where he glared at her over the back of the chair. 

“Do what?” She caught the blob of plasma and extinguished it in a fist. 

“Why—didn’t—nngh!”

“Have a bad dream or something?”

“No! Nn—gah! Nevermind.

“I’m hungry,” Shea said, surprised to find it was true. She’d just eaten an apple, a fairly typical meal for her, she didn’t normally feel hungry. She shrugged it off, figuring sprinting several miles must have burned some calories. “Can we go now?” 

Drew rubbed at his eyes, still glaring disgruntledly at her. “Fine,” he mumbled and all but slid out of the chair. “I ‘ave to get my wallet.”

As he ambled to his bedroom she hopped off the counter and slid her sneakers on, making a mental note to buy socks while they were out. Drew joined her at the door a moment later looking more awake than he had when he left the room. 

“Ready?” He asked, tossing his keys into the air and failing to catch them by nearly a foot. They fell to the floor with a jingle. The tips of his ears turned pink as his eyes met hers, and he hurriedly bent down to pick them up. 

“Are you?” She quipped, mussing with his hair that had gotten messed up during his catnap. She quickly snatched her hand back when she realized what she was doing. His hair was still soft.

The flush spread down his face as he straightened up. His brief attempts to smooth his hair back down did little to help, but before he could hurry off into the bathroom to fix it she grabbed onto his sleeve and reminded him that she was hungry. He started to stammer out a complaint before he sighed, tried again to smooth his hair back down, then opened the door and gestured for her to go before him with a mocking bow. She forced herself not to laugh at his antics as she stepped out past him. He snatched the shopping list from where it was pinned to the corkboard next to the door and followed her down the steps. 

“Can we get strawberries?” Shea asked, trying to ignore the way her legs burned. She really should have stretched after sprinting so far. 

“I thought you didn’t care what I bought,” he teased. 

“I didn’t. Now I want strawberries.”

Before Drew could respond the slimeball creep that had asked him to share her the first night spoke up. “Damn kid, twice in one week? That desperate, Lipsky?” 

“She’s sixteen !” Drew sputtered, wrapping a hand around her arm, startling her enough that the plasma starting to flare up in her hands burnt out. The creep laughed, an even more mucusy sound than his voice, but whatever he said afterward was drowned out by the closing door. 

“I hate that guy,” Drew spat as they reached the end of the sidewalk. He looked significantly angrier than he had when she teased him about library girl the day before. “He’s such—just… he’s—"

“A slimeball?” Shea provided her name for him. 

“Yes, exactly,” he laughed. “A slimeball.”

“Is he always like that?”

“He’s always a jerk if that’s what you mean. I—I’m sorry he’s so—"

“It happens,” Shea dismissed, unconsciously rubbing the almost completely faded bruises on her thigh. Maybe she was a little too used to creeps. 

“Come on, the store is just a few minutes this way.” Drew led her across the street, his hand still wrapped loosely around her arm. The pressure was strangely comforting. 

“You can let go of me now,” she blurted. Not that she wanted him to. But it would only make things worse if anyone who recognized her saw him looking as though he were dragging her around. 

“What?” He glanced at her, then seemed surprised to see his hand was still on her arm. “Oh, right. Sorry.” His fingers drifted down past her elbow, leaving tingles on her skin as he let her go. “I’d rather not break you, anyway.”

“Break me ?” Shea scoffed, genuinely shocked. She felt her eyes going wide as she stared up at him. 

“Yes!” Drew insisted. “You’re just so—" he jabbed a finger into her shoulder. “I mean, do you eat ?”

“You’ve seen me eat!”

“Did you eat lunch today?”

“I ate!”

“What did you eat?”

“An apple,” she told him. While her mother would have been thrilled with that answer somehow telling Drew felt more like a confession. 

“That’s not lunch, Shea!” He protested. He actually seemed concerned. It was almost comforting in the same way his protective hand on her arm has been almost comforting. It still felt nice to have someone act protective over her. “That’s a snack, at best!” And a little embarrassing. She could handle herself. 

She crossed her arms, glaring down at the sidewalk as she shuffled along next to him. “Yeah, well, I forgot, okay?” How could he think she was too skinny? Not that she cared what some dork thought of her. Her parents were always breathing down her neck about how much food she ate. If they knew what foods Drew had given her over the last few days - let alone how much - she’d swear her father would have a stroke. 

“Well, you’re eating something else before I make dinner. It’s not healthy to go without eating.”

“I didn’t go without eating,” she grumbled pointedly. 

“You might as well have.”

“You know, I was wrong that first night.”

Drew blinked at her before pointing towards a building that looked only slightly more pristine than the surrounding buildings. “In here. And about what?”

Shea followed him into the grocery store, glancing around at the other people inside. She absently noticed herself stepping closer to him as if somehow being near him would mean people wouldn’t notice her skin color and recognize her as the allegedly kidnapped superhero. 

“About you being like a mom.” She watched his beady eyes roll behind his glasses as he snatched up a cart. Before he could say anything she skipped up next to him again and elaborated, “You’re more like a grandmother.”

“Nngh! Zip it, pest. This way, come on.” She followed him through the store, trying and failing to stop herself from anxiously shifting her gaze from person to person. 

“You didn’t protest, which means you know I’m right,” she teased. When he didn’t spare her a response she kept going. “So, were you born old, or did you decide at some point in your life that you wanted to be a grandmother?”

He let out a frustrated cry, shooting a glare towards her.“Why must you be so—" He froze mid-sentence, a giddy grin taking over his face before he excitedly exclaimed, “Oh! They have the brand I like again! They were out of it last week!” She watched him as he damn near jumped over the shopping cart to throw the glass refrigerator door open and haul out a gallon jug of chocolate milk.

“Somehow you’re both a grandmother and a toddler, Drew.”

“I should get two just in case they’re out next week,” Drew mused, entirely ignoring her mocking. 

“You’ve got to be kidding. First of all, one of those is bound to go bad,” she pointed out, jerking him away from the fridge by his arm -in part to stop him from grabbing a second jug, and in part to force him to pay attention to her. “Second of all, I’d really like to wear something other than this,” she gestured towards her presentable but uncomfortably unwashed outfit, “and your dork shirts.”

“But cocoa moo,” Drew practically whimpered, reaching a hand towards the door. 

“You said—"

“I know, but one extra gallon won’t set me back too much. Come on, Shea, plea—" She plucked a grape from the bag in the cart, and flung it at Drew’s head. He spluttered for a moment before glaring at her. “Do you think that makes me less tempted to buy a second gallon?”

“You buy a second gallon and I’m gonna keep hitting you with these.” She pelted Drew with a second grape and popped a third in her mouth. The urge she’d felt earlier that morning to break a rule and do something like sneak into Drew’s room subsided slightly as she chewed. Even if he was going to pay for the grapes, it was sort of like breaking a rule.

“Don’t be so—" The third grape she hit him with knocked his glasses slightly askew, and the fourth burst against his head, juice dripping into his ear and down the side of his neck. He let out a strangled series of sounds as he fixed his glasses and wiped the juice off his skin. “Fine, fine,” he relented as she readied a fifth grape. “I’ll buy one, just stop that !”

She grinned wickedly at him, as he continued grumbling about the grape juice in his ear. “Well,” she reprimanded airly, “if you hadn’t gone and grabbed a bag of the mushiest grapes to have ever existed maybe they wouldn’t pop so easily.”

He shot her a squinty-eyed glare. “They’re less expensive than the other brands!”

“So what?” 

“So, that dollar off is the difference between being able to afford food and clothes for you, or not,” Drew explained, snatching the grape from her hand a moment before she could toss it into her mouth.

“Oh,” she mumbled sheepishly, scuffing her sneaker against the cheap mustard-yellow tiles. “Right. Um… sorry.”

A strange look flitted across his face, and he let out a thoughtful sort of hum, examining the grape for what seemed like several seconds too long before finally eating it. “Although…  maybe we should get an extra thing of grapes,” he murmured wistfully.

Chapter Text

Drew informed her, minutes after they put the groceries away and left the apartment yet again, that she had about twelve dollars to buy clothes with. At least she’d remembered to plunk a toothbrush and some other cheap toiletries into the cart before they left the store. She couldn’t do much more than give a nod in response as she tried to mull over how much that would actually be worth.

Ever since she and her brothers had become Team Go her clothes had been designed specifically for her. Even her t-shirts and jeans, which she’d rarely gotten to wear before running away, had been sewn to her exact measurements. Her parents had been adamant that heroes needed to look presentable at all times, which meant wearing her brother’s hand-me-downs was no longer acceptable. They’d been furious when she put up a fight against her uniform being a dress instead of a one-piece like her brothers - they only relented when she pointed out that accidentally flashing a crowd of onlookers would look bad for the team. Shea personally thought that putting her in a flowery green and white dress looked bad for the team on its own. 

She had no idea how much her clothes were actually worth, but if she had to bet, the cuff of her sleeve probably cost more than what Drew was able to provide for an entirely new wardrobe. It wasn’t that she cared about getting the best clothes, but she did have to wonder if she’d be able to afford more than a t-shirt or two. 

“Are you even listening to me?” Drew asked, snapping her out of her thoughts. She’d been nodding along while he ranted and raved about… something.

She shrugged apologetically. “Not really.” She had stopped listening the moment he mentioned the money, too entangled in a vehement debate about how to politely ask how much twelve dollars would get her.

“Well, I was saying ,” he snipped, “that we should wait until it starts getting cooler out to buy you a jacket. People donate nicer ones when they realize their children don’t fit into last years any more.”

“I’m not -”

“Teenagers still count as children of their parents, Shea.” He stuffed his hands into his pockets, his shoulders hunching as he added in a mutter, “That’s all I meant.”

“Fine, whatever,” she mumbled back, unsure of why she was getting more and more offended each time he called her a child. It hurt a little, in a way she couldn’t quite identify. Not that she assumed getting defensive and angry made her look particularly mature. 

She forced herself not to scuff her shoe along the pavement as they walked. The silence between them felt like a pressure pushing on her from all angles, worse somehow, than the silence of the apartment without him. His incessant babbling after he’d gotten back had become some sort of a comfort, especially after having been alone for most of the day. The whole walk back to the apartment after they’d gotten groceries he’d rambled about some new show airing on the cooking channel later that night, practically begging her to watch it with him. Then, while they put the groceries away, she’d listened to him babble on and on about how a bar by his school was advertising a karaoke night on Friday. She’d barely been able to get a word in, but she had actually listened to him the whole time. Of course, he only noticed her the one time she distracted herself.

She lingered behind a step, watching the way he shuffled his feet while he walked, and the way he fidgeted with a penny he’d pulled from his pocket. He must have been annoyed with her, she figured, to have fallen silent for longer than it took to pull in a breath. Did that mean she should apologize? Or was it on him to just get over it? She loathed her parents with a white-hot fury just then… or, well, green-hot, really. If they hadn’t pulled her from school and every other social activity she’d been in as a child, maybe she would have known the answer to that. Maybe it wouldn’t have even been a question.

Even if she should apologize, she couldn’t force the words out without feeling insincere. She wasn’t all that sorry, truth be told, she just didn’t want him to be angry with her. Which was ridiculous. Normally she delighted in pissing people off - granted they were perverted creeps or weirdos who really thought the entire population of the city should bend to their will. Instead of speaking she slipped back into her place beside him and after a few more steps, snatched the penny from his hand. 

“Hey!” Drew protested immediately, trying to grab it back.

Mockingly she asked, “Does the school normally give you your allowance in coins?”

“It’s not an allowance it’s - nngh! Give that back!”

Ignoring him, she tossed the coin into the air. He tried to catch it, managing only to swipe fruitlessly at empty air as the coin landed heads-up in her palm.

“Heads, you have to answer any question I ask,” she said, showing him the coin. He reached for it again, and she slipped it between her fingers as she pulled it away.

“No way!” He shook his head, his hair bouncing. “I’m not agreeing to that.”

“Aw come on, Drew.” She nudged his arm with hers’ gently. “Humor me.”

“Humor yourself,” he muttered. She stared, unblinking at him until he looked at her. “Nn - fine! Just… You have to agree to answer questions when it lands on tails, first.”

“Wanna play would-you-rather?” Shea offered, as she realized he’d probably utilize her saying yes to ask for her last name. Which, if he did, she’d have to hit him for. She didn’t love the idea of that - he’d probably start crying again or something, and she didn’t think she could deal with it.

“I don’t see why not,” he sighed. 

Shea grinned at him, then looked around to find inspiration for her first question. “Would you rather,” she began slowly, as a small bakery caught her eye, “be an average, unknown scientist, or a world-renowned baker?”

Drew hummed in thought, running his hand through his hair. “As a scientist, I’d have no way of making myself known? I wouldn’t do anything significant?”

“You could help someone do something, but you couldn’t do it yourself. And you could never get recognized for your help.”

“Well, I’d like to be a scientist, but given the parameters… World-renowned baker.”

“So, what you’re saying is, you’re in it for the attention?” she teased, nudging his arm again.
“No! I just— I’d like to do something that’s worth it, you know? Something that will actually make a difference. And if I can’t do that as a scientist, at least I could as a baker.” Jokingly he added, “The attention is just a perk.”

“I don’t think I believe that.” 

“Believe what you want.” Drew shrugged and pointed to a shop across the street. “That’s where we need to be.”

While they waited for the crosswalk signal to change, Shea flipped the coin again. “Heads. Would you rather… cook breakfast foods or dinner foods?” The question sounded stupid even in her head, but it was the best she could think up on the spot. It was her fault for asking him to play this game. She could have gotten away with pestering him about his past if she hadn’t been so scared of him trying to dig into hers. 

Drew still mulled it over, as if it were worth the effort to think about. “Dinner, I suppose. Mostly because I have time to cook decent meals for dinner. I normally have to leave too early for a good breakfast. And besides, I can explore more options with dinner.” 

“I need better questions,” she muttered while they crossed the street. 

“Flip the coin again, maybe it’ll be my turn to ask.” Much to her disappointment, it landed on tails. While she was struggling to come up with anything worthy of asking, she worried more about what he might ask her. She expected something goading her into telling him her last name, or an equally unanswerable question. Instead, he asked, “Would you rather drink an entire gallon of iced tea, or eat an entire watermelon in one sitting?” The words left his mouth before she could properly manage to tell him the coin had landed on tails. Surprised by the question, she started to laugh.

“I’ll go with the watermelon, I guess.”

“Why?”

She shrugged. “I’m just not a huge fan of iced tea. I like it and all, just not enough to drink an entire gallon.” There had only been one iced tea that she could have drank an entire gallon of, and ever since the comet struck her mother refused to make it. She’d tried to remember the exact mixture, but the times she managed to sneak the supplies into Go Tower, it had never turned out quite right.

“My father, when I was a child,” Drew said, as he held the door open for her, “used to bring home a watermelon on the last day of school every year. We’d eat the whole thing that night, as proof summer had begun.”

“I bet you were the kind of kid who got scared and cried about how a watermelon was going to grow in your stomach if you accidentally swallowed a seed.”

“I was not ! I mean– nngh! I was four!” 

“I knew it,” she laughed, slipping past him to step inside. Her eyes widened as she took in the interior of the building. 

A bell above the door rang as Drew closed it. He chuckled quietly as he saw her expression, and placed a hand on her shoulder. “Welcome,” he said imitating a game show host, “to the wonderful world of thrift stores.” Stuffed into one corner was a stack of movies that rivaled hers and Drew’s combined . Next to it was shelves full of books that made her want to sit down and read every single one, and made her all the more grateful for Drew’s library card. Knick knacks and toys lined the back wall. The rest of the building was filled up with rows and rows of donated clothes.

“That was terrible,” she said, turning to look at him. A billboard on the wall next to the door caught her eye. 

“Thank you. Now, come on,” he urged, nudging her forward. “Your size is going to be over here. 

“Wait!” Shea brushed Drew’s hand off her shoulder and pointed out, “Job advertisements. Maybe somebody needs a dog walker or babysitter or something.”

Drew glanced behind him, and when his gaze shot back to hers she thought he looked oddly panicked, the way he had during the movie before he freaked out. With unexpected speed and force his hand smacked back down on her shoulder. “Don't— Don't worry about that right now,” he said in a rush, jolting her back around and shoving her forward. “Next time, maybe. I um… I have to get back and do work, so let’s hurry it up.”

“Yeah, but—” She started to protest, but Drew interrupted her with an almost urgent, “ Not now. ”

She threw her hands up, stepping out of range of his insistent shoving. “Fine! Jeez. I was just hoping to pitch in, you know.”

Drew made a strangled sort of sound. “And I do appreciate the sentiment, but if we could get going!” 

With a huff, Shea made her way over to the section he’d pointed her towards. “What’s got you so grumpy?” She muttered under her breath. 

He either didn’t hear her or decided to ignore her. “Pick out anything you want. There are dressing rooms over there. Just be sure to check the price tag. I’d suggest avoiding anything that costs more than fifty cents, but sometimes you can convince them to bring the price down.”

“I’d like to see you trying to haggle,” Shea scoffed. In truth, she could picture it pretty easily. After all, it had only taken one flash of his dopey grin and she’d agreed to watch some lame cooking show with him. 

He shrugged at her. “I got… um, something, from here for less than a dollar. It was worth eight. I’ve got my ways.” When he winked at her - more smooth than she ever would have expected from him - she felt her stomach twist in a strange way - a way she couldn’t decide if she liked or disliked. 

She gave his arm a swift punch. She hadn’t meant for it to hurt, but he yelped, wincing, and she took that to mean she’d probably hit him harder than she meant to. She needed to watch her strength, she decided, before she hurt him too badly.

“ Something ?” She teased anyway, “ Real specific, Drew. Not at all suspicious.” He grunted and shot a glare in her direction but otherwise didn’t respond. 

She couldn’t tell if it was force of habit or the knowledge that it looked best on her, but she found herself gravitating towards anything green. She plucked shirt after shirt off the racks, examining them.
“Oh, that’s perfect for you,” Drew laughed, as she pulled out a t-shirt bedazzled with a large purple butterfly and tiny colorful little flowers. 

Sticking her tongue out she faked like she was going to be sick and nearly threw the shirt back onto the rack. “Am I really that small that kids stuff is going to fit me?” She asked without meaning to. 

“Drat!” He exclaimed. “I meant to make you eat some food before we came here.”

She’d all but forgotten about the hunger working a pit into her stomach and the temptation to hit him, for real, came on as strong as the hunger pangs did. “I’m not that little,” she decided, grumbling to herself.

Drew shook his head. “Yes, you are. You wouldn’t be if you’d eat food.”

“I eat!”

“Not enough, clearly! You look like nobody has fed you in years! You’re all bone!”

“I’m just not normally hungry!”

“You’re eating two servings of dinner tonight, at least, since I forgot to make you have a proper lunch.”

“Fine! As long as it’s good.”

“I’m making cantaloupe fruit salad,” he teased, then sighed as she glared at him. “Chicken fried rice sound better?”

“Much.”

“It’s not the most nutritious meal, but it’s cheap. And easy to make.”

With a snort, Shea started walking in the direction of the dressing rooms, figuring the stack of clothes split between her arms and Drews was more than enough. “I didn’t think you’d be into easy to make meals.”

“Oh, it isn’t easy to make because of me ,” he said. Something about his tone made her pause, and she turned slowly to face him. 

“I’m not helping,” she stated, shaking her head. “Nuh-uh, no way.”

“Come on, Shea! Everyone should know how to cook. I’ll teach you.”

“I don’t need to be taught how to burn down a building!”

“It’s easy and I’ll be right there the entire time in case something goes wrong!”

“Yeah, and you’ll be right there fighting over the toilet when we both end up with food poisoning. Not happening.”

“You know you already helped me with the first step.”

“What? No, I didn’t.”

Drew hummed affirmatively, “Did too. You helped buy the ingredients! So, now we both know none of it has gone bad yet, which means you can learn to cook.”
“I’m not doing it,” she insisted one final time, snatching the clothes from Drew’s arms and marching into the small closet-sized room to try them on before he could argue. 

After half a dozen t-shirts were discarded on the floor with increasing amounts of annoyance, she heard a knock on the wall. “Having trouble choosing or did you get stuck?” Drew’s disembodied voice teased from behind the curtain.

“I’m too small to get stuck,” Shea grumbled, glaring at her body in the mirror. He was right. She’d never really noticed, with how much her parents shoved the idea of the perfect image in her face, but she really was just… far too skinny. Two pairs of jeans, the smallest ones she’d found, both dangled far too loosely around her hips, and the only other pair had slipped right off when she’d finished buttoning them. One t-shirt had been so baggy she looked like a child wearing their parents’ clothing, another had clung to her skin, showing off every rib and ridge of her spine. Something wasn’t right and she knew it, she just couldn’t explain why.

The pit in her stomach seemed to grow, for reasons far beyond hunger. Her parents had done something to her. They had to. Or maybe those creeps at the lab where she had woken up and lived for seven months of her life after becoming a glowing freak had done something. 

She was tempted to put her own clothes back on, and tell Drew to keep his money but tears started welling up in her eyes at the thought, and she knew if she actually said it he’d know she was upset. She swiped at her eyes and chucked another shirt - this one with long sleeves that dangled down like loose skin on her boney arms - into the growing stack of discarded clothing.

Another knock on the wall and Drew asked, “Shea? Are you alright?”

“I’m fine ,” she snapped, snatching up a black tank top from the few shirts left for her to try.

“What’s wrong? You sound upset.”

Shea dragged in a deep, breath, forcing herself to calm down before she snapped at him again and made things worse. At least the tank-top, while still awkwardly too big on her, didn’t actually look horrible. It just looked like it was a little too big. Drews’ clothes didn’t fit right either, some part of her brain reminded which was dumb but a little comforting. She sniffled a bit, and wiped at her eyes again, reaching for a green and black flannel. 

“I’m fine,” she repeated. “Just a lot to try on.”. She thought maybe the bagginess of the flannel wasn’t so bad if she left it unbuttoned. It still looked like she was borrowing someone else’s clothes but… She smirked to herself, as she imagined how the flannel kind of looked like it could have been snagged from a boyfriend, rather than from her dad. That wasn’t so bad, she decided. Girls stole their boyfriends’ clothing all the time, didn’t they? Maybe people would assume she was one of those girls instead of a super- ex-superhero - wondering if her genetics had been tampered with to keep her nauseatingly skinny permanently. 

“Found anything you like yet?” Drew called quietly, clearly trying not to upset her again. 

“Yeah, I guess so.” She spun around trying to get a good look at herself in the mirror. With a sigh, she yanked the too-big jeans up with one hand and pushed the curtain to the side with the other. “How does this look?” she asked before she could convince herself not to. 

Drew audibly gulped, as he looked her up and down. “Looks– looks good,” he stammered. She raised an eyebrow at him and he averted his gaze, the tips of his ears turning pink. “We can get you a belt so you don’t have to hold those up all the time. There’s a ton to choose from.”

“Okay,” she said, admittedly a bit confused by his weird reaction– was he just trying to get her to hurry up? She rolled her eyes at the weak smile he sent over his shoulder and shut the curtain again as he turned away, stuffing his hands in his pockets.

She found three more shirts that she liked, and another tank top with the words, “I love rock and roll” in messy graffiti-style print on the front. It wasn’t much but could get her through a week for now. 

She threw back the curtain once more, to ask Drew how he felt about the tank-top, somewhat bemused by the way his blush had gotten darker each time she’d asked for his opinion.

“Joan Jett,” he said, with a nod, before she spoke. “Very cool.”

“If you’re saying it’s cool I probably shouldn’t believe it,” she mocked.

Instead of getting flustered, his eyes went wide. “You… you don’t know who she is?”

“Drew, my parents got mad at me for reading books. I wasn’t exactly allowed a radio.”

“But you were allowed a television? How does that make any sense?”

She glanced around and grabbed the front of his shirt. He yelped, stumbling as she pulled him into the small room with her. She shut the curtain behind him.

“What are you–”

“My parents gave me a television to watch horror movies on to train me not to let this, ” she explained in an almost angry whisper as she lifted one glowing hand up to his face - he pressed himself flat against the back wall, wide-eyed, “flare-up every time I got scared.”

“Oh,” he squeaked out. “I– I’m… Sorry. I– We– I have some of her music on tape. We can…” His shocked expression faded into a small, nervous, smirk as her hand dropped back to her side. “We can listen while we cook dinner.” She realized then how close she had been standing to him. Unnecessarily close, even in the cramped space. She’d had another half foot to step back, and yet she’d decided to take up as much of his personal space as she could. 

“You mean while you cook dinner,” she snipped and gave him a shove back out of the room.

“Not if you expect a meal I don’t,” she heard Drew mutter.

“Says the guy freaking out about the fact that I didn’t eat a big enough lunch.”

He didn’t respond until she walked out, back in her old clothes. “Got everything you need, chef?”

“Don’t start that,” she warned. “And no. Belt, remember?” 

“Don’t start what?” he asked, feigning innocence as he grabbed her elbow to steer her in the right direction. 

“You know what!”

“Well, why not? You are the one cooking tonight, after all.”

“Am not.”

“Are too.”

“Am not.”

“Are too.”

“Four brothers, Drew. I can do this a lot longer than you can. I am not.” Actually, she was usually the first to quit those kinds of nonsensical arguments, quick to turn the fight physical, but he didn’t need to know that. He fell silent again, and she could only hope that was the end of it. 

Drew helped her sift through the belts, pulling ones at random to offer to her. Well, helped was generous. More than anything he picked up the gaudiest, awful belts he could find - a pink one with plastic rhinestones, a Mighty Martian belt, which she was surprised he cared that it was for kids enough to leave behind - she wasn’t even sure he was actually offering them to her, or just offering them up for her to laugh at. Which she found herself doing more earnestly with each terrible fashion choice he showed her, especially once he gave in and began laughing along with her.  

“Look at this one,” he called. She peered around the rack as he flashed a faux-snakeskin belt at her. On its own, she could have seen the appeal, but the previous owner had apparently taken the liberty of tie-dying it with purples and yellows and reds that made her loath having eyes.

“That is…” The word ‘repulsive’ died on her tongue and she pushed him aside, a neon green belt catching her eye. 

“Find something you like?” He chuckled, evidently not at all upset at being shoved. She nodded absently, pulling the belt down. Another came with it. When she made to pry them apart she realized they were meant to be a package deal. The green one that caught her eye was completed with a black buckle, and the slightly larger one attached was a perfect inverse. 

She debated putting them back, but decided against it, wrapping the green one around her waist. 

She glanced up at Drew. “Thoughts?”

“I think you like green.”

“Yeah, kinda got a flare for it,” she joked, immediately hating herself for it.

“That was terrible,” he said, though his laughter belied him. “But the belt works. You should get it.”

“Yeah,” she sighed, “but it’s three dollars cause it’s a package deal. See?” She showed him the other belt.

He shrugged. “So, I’ll get the price down. And take that belt. I could always use more.”

Something in her stomach flipped at the thought of wearing matching belts, but she found it wasn’t because the idea particularly bothered her. She shrugged back and tossed the belts into his arms.

“I guess we’re done then?” Shea asked. Drew nodded and she gave his shoulder a pat. “Let’s see you work that charm, bargain-boy.”

“No, no, no! Stop that. Don’t start calling me things like that.”

“Aw, but it’s so much fun. Is barter-boy better?”

“Nngh! Shea! Just–” Drew sputtered out a series of incoherent sounds at her, until a strangely calm look took over his face. “Would you rather… have to cook dinner with me tonight or stop calling me things like that?”

“You didn’t flip the coin, dork.”

“Just answer it!”

“Does calling you a dork count?”

He sighed, running a hand through his messy flop of hair. “I suppose not.”

“Then I’d rather stop calling you things like that. Cause I’m not cooking.”

Drew hummed innocently. “If you say so. Let’s go.”

Straightening his glasses, he took the bundle of clothes from her arms, placing them gently on the desk of the cashier, an older woman who glanced up at him through glasses almost as thick as his. Her wrinkled face shifted into a smile as she saw him. 

“Drew,” the woman croaked happily. “How lovely to see you again, dearie!”

“It’s lovely to see you too, Lorraine,” Drew replied. “How have you been these last few weeks?”

“Busy, busy,” she laughed, glancing around the near-empty building. “Not that you would guess right now. I’ve missed the company of good boys like you. Where have you been?”

“Busy myself,” Drew said. “Summer courses have just ended, and now the fall semester has just begun.”

“Did you ever find yourself a roommate to split the cost of that apartment of yours?”

Drew pulled her by the shoulder to stand next to him, and she smiled awkwardly at the old woman. “This is Shea,” he introduced. “She’s taken the second room” 

The woman, Lorraine, squinted at her, looking her up and down scrutinizingly. The woman hummed, seeming displeased. 

“A girl, Drew? Are you sure that’s appropriate?”

“We share entirely separate rooms,” he assured her, adding with a shrug, “I’m sure you understand how I couldn’t possibly leave her on the streets.” 

“You always are such a good boy, Drew,” Lorraine chortled. “Nice to meet you, darling.”

The woman didn’t offer her a hand to shake and Shea didn’t offer hers either. “Likewise,” she managed tersely. Drew squeezed her shoulder. She could only assume he intended to convey some sort of message, and she stared up at him, hoping for some help understanding it.

Lorraine looked back to Drew as Shea floundered to figure out what he wanted her to say or do. “I take it you found everything you needed, Drew?”

“We actually came to find clothes for her,” he explained. “I don’t think she’d be particularly fond of having to continue wearing my t-shirts.”

“Well, I should think not. She’s quite the little thing.” Being talked about like she wasn’t there shouldn’t have been comforting, but a sense of normalcy washed over her nonetheless. 

“We tried to stay within a twelve dollar budget but… Well, I needed a new belt as well. We grabbed that joint pack, but even that puts us out of our price range…”

“Drew, I never mind giving you a deal, you know that. But most of this isn’t for you, it’s for her.” Lorraine’s tone held none of the grandmotherly affection towards her as it did towards him, and she found herself simultaneously wanting to step away and stuck where she was.

She settled on looking down, muttering, “I can put things back.” She’d be content to put everything back if she’d stop watching her. She couldn’t decide if she was more freaked out by the idea that the woman would suddenly realize who she was, or by how much the way the woman eyed her reminded her of her mothers constant commentary on her every move, be it how she threw a punch in a fight or how she ran six miles instead of seven during morning warm-ups. 

“How did you meet Drew?” Lorraine suddenly asked her.

Shea found herself stammering before answering as honestly as she thought worth it, “I met him at a bus stop.”

“Are you homeless?”

“If he decides to take away my key, then yes.”

“What are you going to do if he does?”

“I’m not going to,” Drew cut in, looking almost as flustered as she felt. She didn’t particularly appreciate being interrogated over bargain bin clothing. 

“Do you contribute to the financial situation?”

“Well, I was going to look at the job advertisement when we came in,” she grumbled. 

Drew squeezed her shoulder again, far more gently than the first time. “She helps with pretty much everything else, including my work, so yes, in a way she does.”

“That’s quite nice. But I am still curious as to what you would do if he did ask you to leave… Darling ?”

Shea’s stomach twisted at the idea. She shrugged, feigning nonchalance. “Then I leave. If he really wanted me gone, then I’d leave.”

“Are you quite happy with having her live with you, Drew?”

His brow furrowed as he watched the woman, the familiarity and comfort gone from his expression. “I– yes?” His gaze darted to her, and she stared up at him, silently begging him to just forget the clothes so they could leave. “I wouldn’t have asked you to stay if I didn’t want you to.”

Shea couldn’t help but look away, stuffing her hands into her pockets as she felt her face heat up. 

When she next spoke, Lorraine’s voice had gone back to the voice of a bubbly sweet old lady. “Very good, very good,” she crooned as if she’d just witnessed a spectacular show. “How much of this can you afford, dears?”

Drew blinked, clearly as stunned as she was at the sudden switch. “Twelve dollars worth,” he answered, almost robotically. 

“How about this dear; you give me eight for all this and spend the leftover on ice cream cones for the two of you, while it’s still warm outside? My treat for such a sweet couple.” 

Shea opened her mouth to point out that they weren’t a couple, but Drews nudge - because she couldn’t justify calling something so weak a kick - to her shin told her loud and clear to shut up. 

“Are you sure, Lorraine?” Drew asked, pulling the bills from his wallet. “I couldn’t possibly ask you to drop the price so low.” 

“Don’t you argue with me, Drew Lipsky,” Lorraine lectured, waggling a finger between them. “A sweet boy like you doesn’t often find a girl like her. You take care of her and don’t you ever let her go.”

Shea couldn’t believe the woman hadn’t noticed she was green, with how flushed her face felt. Drew, though she could see the tips of his ears turning pink through his hair, was playing it much cooler than she felt. 

“If you insist,” he laughed, passing over the eight dollars. “We’ll even get double scoops, as an extra thank you to you.”

“That’s my good boy. Lovely to meet you, sweetie!” She waved at them as Drew pulled her out the door, shifting with her to block her view of the billboard on their way. He waved back at the old woman and Shea reluctantly did the same.

“Fifteen dollars worth of clothes,” Drew stated as he passed one bag over to her, “for eight. I told you I had my ways.”

“You have one way,” she protested, laughing, “and that’s being a suck-up.”

“It worked, didn’t it?”

She rolled her eyes, nudging his shoulder with hers. “Thanks for the clothes. Although, a heads up about the questioning would have been nice.”

“I didn’t expect that either,” he told her. “I’ve never seen her like that.”

“Well, of course, you haven’t you’re such a sweet boy ,” she teased. 

He glared at her. “Yes, well. Oh,” he exclaimed suddenly, breaking into a grin, “guess what?”

“What?” She asked hesitantly.

“Are too,” he stated simply.

It took her a moment to realize that he was talking about her cooking dinner with him again - enough time that he’d slipped out of range for her to hit him. “I am not ,” she protested yet again. “If I’m going to burn down your apartment I assure you it won’t be by accident.”

“You’re going to help if you want a double scoop!”

“Are you… are you really planning on using that money to get ice cream?”

“I promised I would,” he said, shrugging as he fell back in step with her.

“What a sweet boy ,” Shea teased again.

“Be quiet before you get no ice cream at all.”

Stifling a laugh, she mimed zipping her lips shut. 

He found her silence worse than her teasing. By the time they made it back to the apartment, he had practically begun to beg her to talk again. 

She smiled at him but didn’t say anything until he said, halfway up the stairs, “Will you talk to me again if I say you don’t have to help cook?”

She didn’t pause to consider as she blurted out, “Sure.”

Drew barked out a laugh, “You spoke! And I didn’t actually promise anything yet! You still have to help.”

He sprinted through their door as she lunged at him, and didn’t stop until he reached the kitchen, clearly prepared to run no matter which direction she came at him from.

She almost gave in and chased him, but the thought of what she would do when she caught him - which she knew was absolutely nothing except tell him again that she would do anything but cook - gave her pause. Instead, she smiled with false calm and composure and sat down on the couch. 

“Food poisoning will work well enough.”

“You’re not going to give me food poisoning!”

She turned her deliberately creepy smile back towards him. “Oh,” she chuckled darkly, “yes, I will.”

Drew paled but didn’t waver as he repeated once more that she was helping him cook and that was that. Damn him. She should have given in and chased him. At least cornering him would have given her something more satisfying. She forced herself to keep up the act, leaning back against the couch to shoot one final eerie smile in his direction.

Chapter Text

Despite her best efforts, by the time Drew completed his homework and she’d looked it over for him he still insisted she had to help make dinner. She considered locking herself in her room, well, as much as she could lock herself in a room that didn’t properly lock, ultimately deciding against it when she realized it would only do more to make her a child in his eyes. 

That didn’t stop her from glaring at him while she sat cross-armed on the counter. “You do realize that it was veggie fried rice that I gave food poisoning to my whole family with, right? And you’re adding chicken, which is even more likely to make us sick.”

“For goodness sake, Shea,” Drew sighed, as he wandered past her with a frying pan. “For someone who claims not to be afraid of anything, you do worry an awful lot.”

“I’m not worried ,” she lied. “I just don’t feel like throwing up.”

He leaned onto the counter, propping his chin on his hand. “Does that mean if you cooked just for me it would be fine?”

She shoved his face away with an open palm, laughing, “I don’t need to deal with you being a huge baby when you get sick. So no, not fine.”

Fixing his glasses Drew stated, almost smugly, “I once ate an entire bowl of raw cookie dough and didn’t get sick! I think I’ll be just fine.”

“You are the biggest dork I’ve ever met. You don’t really think that’s brag-worthy, do you?”

“I’m not bragging! I’m just saying, ” he whined. “I’m not going to get sick from ingredients I know are good. And I’ll be right here making sure everything is cooked through and going fine. Please, Shea?”

“No.”

“ Please ?”

“Didn’t I tell you before that the puppy dog look doesn’t work for you?” 

“I hoped you would change your mind.” He shrugged and turned away to point out a knob on the stove. “Would you turn the stove on for me? It’s that one there.”

“I will not.”

“Shea!”

“If I’m going to burn the building down I’d rather it be via an undetectable source.” She shoved a flaming hand toward him, but he merely blinked and took a small shuffle away. “I’m not in the mood to get sent home having been caught committing arson.”

“Would you quit being ridiculous and just turn the stove on?” Drew snapped at her, knocking her arm away at the elbow. 

She didn’t budge. “I thought you liked to cook.”

“I do!”

“Then why make me do it?”

“I’m not always going to be here, you know. And– and… And it would be nice to have a little help once in a while if you’re going to be staying here! The stove?”

She glared while he ranted, half-tempted to kick him. “I hope you enjoy prison. At least it’ll be better for you than being forced to go back home will be for me.” 

His worried, guilty, look almost made up for his forcing her to help. She slid begrudgingly off her spot on the counter and twisted the knob, careful to leave it on the lowest possible setting. 

“I need it higher than that,” he instructed, “At least medium heat to start.”

“If you want it any higher than that you’re gonna have to turn it up yourself. I’m not doing it.” 

He glared at her for a long moment and she stared back, neither of them willing to give in and be the one to turn the heat up. With a roll of his eyes he finally caved, and practically slapped the knob to a higher setting.   

“Was that so difficult?”

“It’ll be difficult to get out of here when the place goes up in flames.”

“Shea,” he whined. “Stop that!”

“Freaking you out?” 

“Yes!” 

“Good.” He whined her name again and she forced herself to stifle a laugh. “Didn’t you say you had music you wanted me to listen to?”

Drew gasped and without actually responding dashed around the counter and threw open his bedroom door. She hopped off the counter, intent on following him to get a sneak peek inside his room. The stove caught her gaze as she took a step. An image of the kitchen catching on fire while she snuck up on Drew formed in her mind and with a huff she returned to her spot, glaring at the stove. 

Of course, there wasn’t even so much as a flicker of smoke in the time it took for him to return. Obviously giddy, he plopped a boombox onto the counter next to her. He held a cassette tape box out to her with an overdramatic flourish. 

“Would you like to do the honors?” 

 She held out her hand, and he dropped the tape into her open palm. She turned it over, inspecting the woman on the cover. Her smudged black eyeliner and choppy dark hair intrigued her. Maybe - maybe - Drew had actually been right in his “very cool” comment. 

She tapped the tape out of the box and turned to pop it into the boombox. Drew hit play before she could, evidently more excited to share the music with her than she actually was to listen. The stove still burning away had too much of her attention, and she debated reaching over and turning it off while his attention was on the music. The drumbeat blaring through the speakers startled her out of following the impulse.

She gaped at Drew, drumming along in the air, his hair bouncing as he nodded his head in time with the music. She resisted the urge to giggle, reminding herself again that there was no way she could have a crush on him. He stopped just before the lyrics began when his glasses nearly flew off his face. 

“Come on,” he laughed, his face red with exhilaration. He repeated himself, louder to be heard over the music, and held a hand out to her. His smile started to fade when she hesitated, but she smacked her hand into his before it could turn into a genuine frown. Beaming yet again he pulled her off the counter and she let him spin her around, despite the move not fitting the music. 

Before she knew what was happening he’d dropped her hand and whirled around. She tapped her foot to the music, as she watched him. He turned back to her, a spatula clutched in his hand like a microphone, crooning along to the chorus of the song. 

She pushed his arm away when he held the spatula out to her to sing - not that she was too embarrassed to sing in front of him or anything. “I don’t know the lyrics,” she reminded him. He shrugged and brought the spatula back to his lips, dancing around her to pry the fridge door open.

She shifted back and started to reach out to turn the stove off. He turned back to her faster than she would have expected, and, tsking, latched onto her wrist. Throwing the package of raw chicken onto the counter, he pulled her away from the stove. Just before she could collide into him, which she wouldn’t have been particularly upset about, he moved, leaving her standing in front of the open fridge.

He listed off the ingredients he’d need out of the fridge and quite literally danced away before she could protest. With a roll of her eyes, she set about the easy task of finding what he’d asked for. 

The song ended just as she placed everything onto the counter for him, glaring at the smug smile on his face. “See, now you’re cooking,” he chuckled in the brief moment of silence before the cassette clicked and the next song started. 

“I am not ,” she insisted. 

He bit his lip, then smirked at her and turned up the music. “What?” He mockingly called over the blaring lyrics about running away that made her face heat up even before he quipped, “Sure you never heard this before? Seems like it could’ve been your theme song.”

She shoved his shoulder, careful not to push him hard enough to make him stumble into the knife resting precariously on the cutting board behind his back. “Shut up,” she shouted over to him, shaking her head. 

He passed the knife to her, which she took from him on instinct more than anything else - being stabbed more than once had left her plenty wary of men holding any sort of blade. “Cut up the chicken. Bite-size pieces work best,” he instructed. She thrust the handle of the blade back towards him. 

“No. No way .”

He held his hands away from the knife and took a step back. “All you have to do is cut it. There’s nothing you can do that could mess that up bad enough it can’t be fixed.”

She tried to make him take the knife back again, and when he wouldn’t she dropped it on the counter. “What if I give you radiation poisoning or something?” she snapped, offering up a glowing hand as lack-luster proof she could make him sick.

“Then I’m just as much at risk standing next to you as I would be eating something you cooked. Go on.” He pushed the knife back into her other hand and quickly stepped away so she couldn’t give it back.

All she could do was hope she at least looked frightening, glaring at him with a knife clutched in one hand, flames flickering around the other. She must not have, given the way he didn’t so much as flinch as he stared back. 

“Not really the chicken I feel like cutting with this knife right now,” she grumbled. He reached to turn down the music, his eyebrow quirked inquisitively. She didn’t repeat herself.

“Come on,” he insisted, though his voice had grown gentle and encouraging, taking a bit of the teasing edge off. “I promise you, you can do this. You’re not going to mess up anything. And even if you do, so what?”

She felt her face flush again, torn between embarrassment over her own stubbornness and embarrassment over the idea of having him watch her attempt something she knew she was terrible at. She considered throwing the knife back onto the counter and staying in her room until the meal was cooked… or maybe after he’d finished eating and gone back to his room just to avoid having to look at him while she felt so flustered. But she also considered how immature that would seem to him- even if he had been the one dancing around the kitchen using cooking utensils like microphones like a tween girl singing into her hairbrush. 

“I’m only going to do this because stabbing things is fun,” she told him finally, deciding that giving in and letting them both get food poisoning was better than looking like a child in his eyes any more than she already did. 

She’d half expected him to confiscate the knife and kick her out of the kitchen but he only leaned back against the counter with an obnoxiously satisfied look on his face. “That’s the spirit,” he laughed. As she began cutting up the chicken - careful not to do so in a way that would make her look like an idiot, but not so careful that he didn’t remind her at least once that fingers don’t grow back - he began to tell her about the first meal he ever cooked. 

“Honestly,” he admitted with a small shake of his head, “I don’t really remember the story that well myself. I was only seven or so, after all.” 

Shea glanced over to him just briefly, long enough to let him know she was listening to him over the quiet, energetic hum of Joan Jett playing in the background. He leaned back against the counters on his elbows, watching her cut the chicken carefully. She almost expected him to push her to the side and take over, and she all but hoped he’d try one of those cheesy moves and step closer to her to guide her hands in the proper movements. She almost drove the knife into her own head just to get rid of that thought. It would’ve been such a sleazy thing for him to do, and she hated herself for being simultaneously relieved and disappointed that he didn’t try. 

“But my mother likes to tell the story whenever family comes to visit,” Drew continued quietly. “Apparently I had been out playing with some of the neighborhood children all afternoon - three children around my age who moved away later that year. Mother tells me that the youngest used to follow me everywhere I went, that she cried when I got on the bus to school every morning, begging to go with me.”

She poked his arm with the handle of the knife, teasing, “Your first girlfriend?” She hated the way those words felt coming out of her mouth and hated more that she felt anything towards them at all.

He only scoffed and rolled his eyes. “I don’t even remember what her name was,” he dismissed with a wave of his hand. “I mostly just called her ‘baby’, according to Mother. ‘Bee’ for short, actually.”

“Aww, how cute. Pet names.”

“Just cut the chicken,” he grumbled and crossed his arms, glaring half-heartedly at her through lopsided glasses. She stuck her tongue out at him, not pointing out that she was nearly finished, reluctant to draw his gaze towards the massacred chunks of chicken. “As I was saying , I’d spent all afternoon playing with those children, and by the time I went in, I was caked head-to-toe in mud. Mud pies,” he laughed quietly under his breath, and she glanced over again, not sure it was all that happy of a laugh. His smile had dropped a little, his eyes darker than she’d seen them yet, sending a strange, almost nervous feeling through her chest. 

“My parents banned me from making mud pies when I was eight,” she interrupted, unwilling to let herself dwell on whether or not this was actually a happy memory for him. “Merrick chucked a bunch at this kid. Broke one of his birdhouses. We got sent home before dessert and I was forever banned . I didn’t even know why we’d gotten in trouble in the first place until the next time the kid came to our house.”

“I don’t believe you didn’t throw the first one,” Drew laughed, the smile back on his face. She felt her shoulders relax, releasing tension she didn’t realize she’d been holding. “I just don’t believe it.”

 Shea shrugged. “I liked Wren. He was weird, yeah, almost as much of a dork as you, but whenever he came over to build a birdhouse or something he’d let me paint it. It used to piss Merrick off because he swore he’d paint it better, but he asked me to do it anyway.” 

“Your first boyfriend?” Drew mocked, throwing her earlier question back at her.

Likewise, she only scoffed and rolled her eyes. “Don’t be a creep. Wren was Heath’s friend. He used to babysit me and the twins.”

“So, your first crush then.” 

“Not even close.”

“Yeah, who was it then?” Drew asked, leaning forward. His teasing smirk made her blush and drop the knife to put a hand on his chest and push him away.

“Tell you mine if you tell me yours,” she wagered. 

He rocked back on his heels and snatched the cutting board, moving it behind him, then turned and pressed a green bottle into one of her hands, a small measuring spoon into the other. “Olive oil. About a teaspoon and a half, give or take. Into the pan,” he instructed, nodding his head toward the stove which she’d all but forgotten was on and potentially moments away from catching the kitchen on fire. 

“Not happening. I cut the chicken already. That’s enough.”

He regarded her carefully, his hand slowly lifting to take the bottle from her own. But then he shook his head and dropped his hand back to his side repeating, “Teaspoon and a half.”

She kicked out at his shin lightly but, obviously expecting it, he jumped out of the way and stuck his tongue out at her. Carefully pouring the olive oil into the measuring spoon, she asked, “So? Who was it?”

“I asked you first.”

“So?”

“So, if you want mine you have to say yours.” 

She didn’t answer for a moment, too busy cringing as she dumped the olive oil into the pan. She didn’t exactly expect the oven to explode or anything, and she didn’t really want it to, but she almost wished it would just to prove to him that making her cook was a terrible idea. It didn’t.

“I don’t know what his name is,” she admitted. “Just some actor from some old western movie my dad used to watch with me whenever I got sick as a kid.” The first and only time she’d come down with a cold since the comet struck she’d spent the day stuck in Go Tower, sniffling and sneezing and begging her father to watch the movie with her. She’d spent the night crying to herself when he never came, more terrified than anything by the realization that Shego mattered more than Shea. She almost wanted to blurt that fact out too, but instead, she added, “Wasn’t even a good movie.” 

“Now that I think about it, I don’t know what the name of my first crush is either.” He poured the chicken into the pan, though she couldn’t tell if it was because he’d finally taken pity on her or he’d just forgotten - either way, she wasn’t going to protest. “I don’t even know if you could call it a crush,” he added under his breath. “Yeah? Why not?”

His face flushed again when he realized she’d heard him. Drew squeaked awkwardly and explained in a rush, “I didn’t feel like getting up to change the channel one night as a kid and… And well– um– it’s… Let’s just say it wasn’t particularly appropriate for a six-year-old to watch.” 

Swallowing the laughter bubbling up her throat, she feigned naivety. “What do you mean? Why not?”

“Don’t try that with me,” Drew muttered. “We both know you know why not.”

“I’m sure I don’t know.”

“Nngh– then– Fine! Good! You don’t get to, either!” Just then he looked more likely to catch on fire than she was, cooling off only as he tossed a bag of frozen vegetables at her, demanding she add a cup’s worth of them to the pan. She only realized she’d done what he’d asked without arguing when she turned around and caught his smug grin.

“Shut up,” she said before he could speak. He raised his hands up in surrender, but the grin stayed plastered to his face. She tossed a stray carrot chunk that had missed the pan at his face. “Didn’t take you for the frozen vegetable type.”

“I couldn’t even afford fresh vegetables before you showed up. I certainly can’t afford it now.”

“Well, as long as you couldn’t afford it before I have no guilt over that.” 

“You shouldn’t,” he told her, suddenly serious. “I’m not trying to make you feel guilty.”

She couldn’t do anything other than look away from his earnest stare, feeling her whole body warm over and flush. Drew wrapped a hand around her wrist. She let herself be pulled, stumbling toward him, shocked and more flustered than a moment before, only to have him plant his other hand on her shoulder, stopping her before she could collide into him - for the second time that evening. He pressed a wooden spoon into her hand and physically turned her toward the stove, instructing her to stir what was in the pan while he prepared the rice. 

She shot a glare at his back when he let her go and turned away, unsure if she was more annoyed at him for continuing to make her cook or at herself for being upset that he didn’t pull her into him. “You never finished your story,” she noted a minute later, stepping away from the stove as he began to add the rice to the pan. Her voice was colder than she meant for it to be.

His brow furrowed together in confusion, his eyes darting upward as if the answer to all the world’s questions were written on his ceiling. “What story?” he finally asked. 

“First meal, mud pies, that one.”

“Oh! Right! Where was I?” 

“Um… I think just… going home covered in mud.”

“Yes! Keep stirring,” he instructed, waving her back in front of the stove. He didn’t even wait for her to begrudgingly return to her spot in front of the stove before he continued his story. “Well, my mother had planned to make chicken pot pie, but she… well, she’d gotten everything out, but ended up getting distracted and wasn’t able to cook.”

“Why not?” Shea pried.

He just shook his head, dismissively. “It was already getting late, and the girl had followed me inside, crying because she was hungry - I suppose she could have gone home at that point, but we were kids. My mother says I used to do anything to make sure she was happy. And mother’s recipe book was right there on the counter.”

He paused a moment to take the pan off the stove, and she happily relinquished the wooden spoon. “Are we done now?” she asked, practically begging.

Sighing, he nodded and dumped the food into two bowls she hadn’t seen him get out in the first place. “Yes, we’re done. Here.” He passed one of the two bowls over to her. 

She trailed a step behind him on the way to the table, poking the rice with her fork apprehensively. “I’m not sure I want to eat this,” she told him as she took her seat, and was immediately met with the sight of him rolling his eyes and shoveling a massive oversized bite into his mouth. She waited for him to spit out the food - or at least choke on an undercooked grain of rice or something, but he didn’t.

“It’s good,” he said, shooting her a grin that made her roll her own eyes to avoid blushing. 

“Sure, it was last time too,” she muttered, pushing the rice from side to side. 

“Oh, just try a bite!”

With a groan, she took a bite. Damn him , it was good. “The rice is chewy,” she complained. It wasn’t. 

“Liar! It is not.” 

She smirked at him, taking another hesitant bite. 

“It’s good ,” Drew repeated. “You didn’t kill either of us, or blow up the building, or anything.”

“Yeah, well…” 

He grinned at her again, more smugly, as she took her third bite. 

She was halfway through the bowl, listening to Drew finish his story about how his mother caught him and the young girl throwing as much dirt into the chicken pot pie as they did food, when something in the kitchen caught her eye, and she tapped her fork against the table to get his attention, feigning relaxation she no longer felt. “Hey, Drew?”  

He glanced up at her, humming his acknowledgment.

“Your paper towels are on fire,” she informed him, gesturing toward the smoking roll, quickly going up in flame. 

He turned. And then he shrieked, knocking his chair over in his rush to stand up. He ran the few steps back into the kitchen, bouncing from one foot to the next indecisively, tugging at his hair. 

Before the wall behind the towels could catch fire too, Shea pushed Drew - busy throwing open drawers, muttering something about oven mitts - out of her way, and the scooped the burning mess up. Her hands stung with the abnormal feeling of regular old fire, but not bad enough to draw her attention for longer than a moment. She chucked it into the sink, the flames starting to die even before she turned on the faucet. A rush of steam fogged up in her face.

There was a long silent moment between them before she turned to face his wide-eyed stare. “Told you I was bad luck in the kitchen,” she said, forcing an awkward laugh. She hoped he would laugh too, but he didn’t.

Instead, he muttered, sounding horrified, “I forgot to turn off the stove.” Then he stepped towards her so quickly she almost stepped back, but he caught her by the wrists. “Are you alright?” he asked, pulling her hands up to look at them. 

She blushed and pried her quickly blistering hands away. “I’m fine,” she told him. Her fingers still stung a little, but she knew that it would only take an hour or two for them to heal over completely.

“No, you’re not,” he protested quietly, drawing her hands back up. The look on his face was so sweet and gentle that she let him. “You’re hurt.”

“I’m fine,” she promised him, then amended that to say, “I will be fine.”

He let out a ragged sighed, hanging his head. “I’m so sorry. Stay here, I’ll be right back”

“Drew?” she called after him, as he retreated into the bathroom. 

He didn’t answer and returned a few short minutes later, a first aid kit and a bottle of aloe in his hands. He brushed at his face, and she couldn’t quite tell if he was already crying or just looked like he was about to. 

“I really don’t– I’m okay… You don’t need to–”

“Hop up,” he interrupted, gesturing to the counter. 

“Drew, seriously, it’ll heal–”

“Please, Shea,” he all but begged.

She gave in and hopped up onto the counter before he could start crying. “You know, it’s not your fault I grabbed that, right? I’ve had worse burns from myself before.”

“It’s my fault for not turning off the stove,” he whispered, choking out the words as he took her hand between his own. The aloe was cool enough to send a shiver through her, and then the relief she felt as he spread it into her skin, his thumbs pressing against her palm, was unlike anything she could remember feeling before. 

“You know, my parents banned me from using aloe,” she said. He kept his gaze focused on her hand, not meeting her eye. She wasn’t sure she could handle looking him in the eye either, as he started wrapping her hand up in gauze bandages that were more than useless on skin that could recover from almost any wound in a matter of hours, if not minutes. “They thought it would spoil me or something, make me too weak and fragile to use my glow.”

“I like your parents a little bit less with every detail I learn about them.” He pulled her other hand toward him and began repeating the process. His ears had gone pink again, she noticed. She watched him silently, as he took care of her singed hands with more… well, with more genuine care than any of the Team Go medical staff, or even her actual family had since she was a child. It was sweet, and she almost hated him for it. She didn’t know how to handle being cared for.

She kicked her foot out, bumping it against his leg. “Told you I was bad luck,” she said to him again, avoiding her thoughts.

He shot her a small smile as he finished wrapping the gauze up around her wrist to tape it off. “That was entirely my fault, Shea. I’m–”

“If you say you’re sorry one more time I swear I’ll burn these bandages off and prove I’ve given myself worse burns.”

He kissed her fingertips before dropping her hand. Her face must have gone as green as his did red, and just as quickly at that. Neither one of them spoke as their eyes finally met again. A million thoughts ran together until they were indecipherable in Shea’s mind. She didn’t know what to do or say or even how to feel about the fact that… he had just kissed her. It was just her fingers, sure, but he kissed her nonetheless. 

“I– Um… Force of habit,” Drew said, chuckling nervously. “I’ve done my fair share of cleaning up my baby cousins’ cuts and scrapes.” 

Her blood ran cold, with none of the relief the aloe had brought. He still thought of her as a child. She’d thought– She didn’t even know what she thought! She’d hoped, somewhere in her racing thoughts, that he’d kissed her fingers like that because he cared or something, that it was something friendly, not because she was like a baby cousin to him! 

She hopped off the counter before he could step away, putting their bodies unnecessarily close together. “Not a child,” she snapped as he moved back. 

He was barely even a half-step behind her as she moved back to her probably-cold bowl of fried rice on the table. “That’s not what I meant. Shea? I didn’t– I’m sorry , okay? I only meant that it’s a force of habit.”

“Whatever,” she dismissed flippantly. What was she getting so mad about anyway? It didn’t matter what he thought. He was just some guy she was living with. She still wasn’t even sure she liked him, let alone enough for his thoughts on her to matter.

“You’re mad at me,” he sighed. When she didn’t answer he sat back to his own bowl and quietly asked, “Why are you more mad at me for that than you were for getting you hurt?”

“Madder.”

“What?”

“It’s not ‘more mad’ it’s ‘madder’. And I’m not,” she lied. “And you didn’t get me hurt. This is nothing. And I made the decision to pick it up, so just… Shut up already.”

“I’m sorry,” he repeated around a mouthful of food. “We should put more aloe on in the morning.”

“That really won’t–”

“Shea, your hands are completely blistered up! Just– Nngh! It wouldn’t kill you, you know, to let yourself… I don’t know, not be in pain.”

“Sheesh, you’re real uppity for someone who tried to set me on fire.”

“Shea!” he whined. 

“Cool it,” she laughed, somewhere between forced and genuine, and kicked him under the table. He flinched and scooted his chair further away from the table with a glare in her direction. “I’m just kidding.”

Drew gasped, startling her. “The show!” he cried out. “The new cooking show! It’s about to start!” His poor chair clattered to the ground for a second time. He was racing toward the couch before she could even blink, flipping rapidly through channels to get to the new show. 

“Are you gonna watch with me?” he asked, turning on his knees to look over the back of the couch at her. 

“Cooking shows aren’t really my thing,” she teased, already standing up to go join him.

“I’d like for you to stay,” he told her. His sincerity made her stomach twist and her brain do flips trying to figure out what his feelings towards her were - was she a friend or a child in his eyes? 

“Are you worried it’s gonna be scary?” she asked, letting herself fall onto the couch beside him, careful to keep her lightly mummified hands up to avoid any unneeded pain from hitting them against anything for the next half hour. 

“No,” he muttered, “just nice to have someone to watch it with, I guess.” 

She nudged his shoulder with her own, as the show began. “You’re the king of dorks.”

“What does that make you?”

Shea paused, then answered, “The supreme leader of the world and everything, more powerful than any king.”

“That seems fair,” Drew laughed, nudging her shoulder in return, “for someone who can just set fire to anyone who bothers her. Now shush.”

She jabbed a finger against his ribs, then flinched as the pressure inadvertently made the burn hurt a smidge more. 

“I’m cold,” she whined, at the commercial break. Two minutes later found her having to shift closer to him to share the blanket he had brought back out from his bedroom. She forced herself to avoid the temptation to curl up against him, as much as she wanted to rest her head on his shoulder and let herself fall asleep. In fact, she did her best to avoid touching him at all. Except, of course, to elbow him and demand he make the meals the chefs on the show made, her mouth watering at the sight of them. He refused to promise anything, pushing her gently. 

She faked a gasp. “First you try and burn me alive, and now you’re assaulting me?”

“I oughta put tape over your mouth, is what I should do,” he mumbled in return, before gesturing to the television. “Back on. Zip it.”

She resisted the temptation for as long as she could, at least. She was barely conscious by the time her head crashed against his shoulder, while the chefs finished up their last meals of the episode. She felt him wrap the blanket more snugly around her, and even though she was attempting to force herself awake and off of him, she slipped entirely out of consciousness, asleep on his shoulder.

Chapter Text

She couldn’t possibly have been asleep for very long when Drew shook her awake, laughing, “I can’t believe you fell asleep before the judges could decide who won.”

She brushed his hands off her shoulders, more than a little flustered by the realization that she was only a small movement away from genuinely cuddling up to him. “Yeah, well,” she muttered awkwardly, going to rub at her eyes before remembering her bandaged hands and dropping them back into her lap. “Who’d they pick?”

The name he said only made her raise an eyebrow at him until he sighed out, “The one that made the steak with the garlic herb butter?” 

Shea nodded at that. “Good. That looked good.”

“I know. You probably bruised my ribs from how many times you told me to make that.” He rubbed at his side, glaring at her through glasses she was tempted to steal for no other reason than to annoy him… and to make herself stop feeling awkward about having fallen asleep on his shoulder. “You should eat some more food,” he said before she could follow through with the idea. “There are at least two more servings left.”

“Not hungry.”

He practically wagged his finger in her face. “I told you earlier, you have to eat more to make up for skipping lunch.”

“I’m not hungry. I’ve already eaten more today than I do most days,” she mumbled, hating that telling him this still felt so… so much like telling him some big secret. Something she should be ashamed of. Maybe because of the way his brow furrowed or the way he shook his head slowly like he didn’t know what to say.

“Fine,” he relented sullenly. “But we’re going to have to work on building your appetite. Eating so little can’t possibly be healthy.”

Shrugging, she yawned, “Whatever,” and waved her hand to dismiss the uncomfortable subject.

He blinked at her, a frown still plastered on his face before his expression shifted and he rubbed at his shoulder awkwardly. “You should– um… You look– Well, no you just… you seem tired… You should– and I will too– but you should go to bed.”

Embarrassed, she was quick to agree and retreat into the safety of her own room, barely remembering not to lock the door behind her. She heard his door close just after she collapsed onto her bed. 

Of course, once there, she couldn’t fall back to sleep. She tossed and turned, squeezing her eyes shut so tight colors danced behind her eyelids. She couldn’t decide if that was better or worse than staring around the room at the panic-inducing blank white walls. A moment later, when the mortifying wishful image of curling up against Drew flashed through her mind, she decided that staring at the walls was better, even if it did make her stomach turn. 

She pulled restlessly at the blankets, all her earlier fears coming to mind at once. She knew he had already, but the temptation to go make sure the front door was locked was strong enough that she had to twist herself into the sheets to stop herself from checking. Not that it would matter if anyone on Team Go discovered where she was. 

Despite her resolve not to go checking the door she stumbled out of the bed a moment later to check the small window in her room, wondering if the seal was tight enough that Mego wouldn’t be able to shrink small enough to snake his way inside if Hego hurled him up. Hell, she dismissed, even if it was tight enough to keep him out, it wouldn’t be unlike her parents to simply tear the wall down. Or the twins would clone their way inside. She had no idea if there even was an effective way to keep the little doppelgangers out. 

Drew’s casual reaction to the potential of being labeled a kidnapper had her all the more worried. He really didn’t seem to understand how bad things might be for him. She blamed herself for that too. She should have just told him the whole truth the moment he told her she could stay. It was as she finally fell back to sleep, on the brink of unconsciousness, that she mentally declared she would tell him in the morning. 

She woke up in a cold sweat, Wendell and Westley’s names dying on her tongue. She choked back a sob, commanding herself not to cry. She couldn’t change anything now. They survived. Before her minimal words of self-comfort could calm her, a new wave of panic flashed through her as some sort of clanking sounds drew her attention to her bedroom door. 

She’d been sure Drew had gone to sleep, so she could see no reason for him to be out there. A glance toward her window showed the star-lit predawn sky, further evidence that if he wasn’t asleep he certainly should have been.

Pulling in a heaving breath, she listened intently for voices but heard nothing but a continuation of the quiet sounds. As she stood, combing her fingers through her hair and glaring at the door, she debated who she’d prefer for it to be. 

If it was cops, she and Drew were both screwed. Heath would be a pain in the ass for her, and unless she could convince him, somehow, not to bother checking the other rooms, Drew would be beaten to a pulp before he could even get his glasses back on his dumb not-cute face. Heath was picky with when he played the overprotective big brother card, but she knew instinctively this would be one of those times. Merrick would be fine. As much as he drove her crazy he might be the only one who would understand why she would want to run away, and if she said to leave the other rooms alone he’d respect it - even if he did it with more than a fair share of mocking questions. The twins were unpredictable - but if they were the ones snooping around outside her room she hoped they’d be more excited to see her than they were about finding out who ‘kidnapped’ her. 

She doubted her parents would bother to be the ones to show up. They never showed up to anything anymore, except for news interviews where they doted on and bragged about their children as if they didn’t treat them like magic puppets the rest of the time. She didn’t even give the question of what would happen if it was them the time of day… or night, as it were. 

She looked herself over, deciding that the clothes she was wearing were sufficient enough to face whatever was happening outside and quietly opened the door. All she wanted to do was throw it open and start screaming, but if she was going to be forced to leave she figured it was better to do so without waking Drew. If she was going to leave it would probably be better for him if she simply vanished from his life altogether. That, and she couldn’t stand the idea of him… being there when she got dragged away, knowing she’d probably never get the chance to repay his kindness. She couldn’t even force herself to take the bandages off her hands, fearing momentarily that they would be the only reminder of him she’d be able to take with her. 

The moment she stepped out of her room something clicked, then whistled and she ducked just in time for something to whiz by where her head had just been. Whatever the flying object was splattered against the door frame, some sort of liquid spraying the back of her neck. She swiped at the moisture rapidly, already wondering what form of toxic poison it might have been. It was cold, but it didn’t hurt, and as she whirled around to check the door frame she realized that it was… a grape? 

She whipped her head back around, and realized with an almost painful relief that Drew was sitting at the small dining table, looking unharmed, if a bit panicked. He’d begun apologizing profusely before she even noticed the strange, colorful device in his hands. She relaxed as she took in the bits and pieces of… stuff spread out across the table. It was him. She’d heard him… tinkering away at whatever the device was outside her door. 

“What are you doing?” she demanded, trying to hold back a hysterical laugh.

“Um… I… Uhh… I built a grape cannon,” he stammered, grinning sheepishly at her and holding the thing, that did look a bit like a gun, out for her to see.

She snorted, to hide how much her hands were shaking. “Why?”

“Well, because, you were– and I was and… You threw grapes at me and I– I had the idea and wanted to see—”

It took her a moment to realize what he was talking about. “What,” she asked incredulously, “I threw some grapes at you at the store so you decided to kill me ?”

“No,” he shouted, sounding more worried than upset. “I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to shoot at you! It just gave me the idea and I wanted to see if I could… build a projectile weapon to shoot… grapes.”

Peeling the bits of smushed grape off the door frame, she chuckled, “You’re a weird dude, Drew,” and flicked the mush over at him. 

He stuck his tongue out at her, relaxing back into his chair. “Nyeh. Maybe I should’ve shot you.”

“Watch it,” she warned, mostly teasing. 

“Do you wanna fire it?” he asked, holding it out toward her.

As she reached for it she teased, “At you? Sure,” and he pulled it back against his chest, with enough speed to surprise her, cradling it like a baby.

“Nngh! Nevermind, you’re not allowed.”

“Aw c’mon, let me see!”

“No!”

“Drew!” Shea reached forward, trying to get him to pass the dumb device over, but he pulled it away from her again. “I’m not above fighting you for that,” she warned him, already ready to throw herself across the table to get if she had to. 

He gulped. “Just don’t– Just shoot it that way!” 

She snatched the miniature cannon from his hands the moment he held it out to her. As per his instructions, she turned it away from him, aiming it at the door - or at least she hoped so. Superheros don’t need weaponry. Well, if she weren’t a superhero the surprising force of the kickback might have knocked her back a step or two - even if pulling the trigger in the first place was a little awkward with her hands still bandaged. The grape that shot out smacked against the door with a solid ‘thwunk!’ sound. She burst into laughter and fired again, her aim off, but just enough that she hit the hinge of the door instead. Grape bits flew through the air. 

“Hey,” Drew protested, rushing around the table to snatch it from her. “It’s my turn!” 

She laughed, relenting easily and letting him take his toy back. When he nudged her out of his way she caught a whiff of a vaguely familiar scent, and before she could realize she knew what it was, she was asking, “Have you been drinking?”

He fired the cannon, grape splattering just above the door, and shot her an impish grin. “Just a bit,” he confessed, holding a finger to his lips. “It’s a secret recipe. And I’m legal, so whatever.”

“Can I have some?” She was mostly kidding, but his quick, snappish reply in the negative had her crossing her arms and demanding to know why not. 

He answered her with a dismissive wave of his hand. “Ask me again in five years and I’ll give you some.”

Her brow furrowed in confusion for a moment. Then she reached out and shoved his shoulder. “Come on, don’t be lame. I only want a taste.”

He shook his head, stepping away from her. “No chance. I am not abetting in underage drinking.”

“You’ve been in college since you were how old? You’re really going to try and tell me nobody slipped you a drink from time to time?”

Drew stammered at her, opening and closing his mouth as he struggled to find an argument. When she snorted he threw his hands up in frustration, dropped the grape cannon on the table, and stormed into the kitchen. He came back a moment later with a small cup of… of something, that barely filled even half the glass. 

Now that she had it in her hand, she was a little nervous to actually drink it. She might be able to believe that Merrick had snuck some alcohol before, but she knew for a fact Heath had never touched the stuff. She hadn’t either - she’d tried to buy some cheap beer once, in a small act of rebellion, but had been unsuccessful and led outside the corner store by the owner who warned her she was lucky he wasn’t going to call her parents. Too bad he hadn’t realized that was exactly what she’d hoped he would do. If she hadn’t wanted to be caught she would have just pocketed the stupid drink. 

“What is it?” she asked curiously, swirling it around the glass. 

“Secret recipe,” Drew answered, scooping the cannon up and shooting at the door. He missed, and the grape splattered several inches to the side. A laugh burst out of her and he turned to glare in her direction. “It’s like caramel apple,” he elaborated, grumbling almost defensively. “I don’t usually make it until closer to Halloween but I wanted it so I made it now.” 

Shea took a cautious sip, and couldn’t help smiling at the unexpectedly sweet taste. She took another sip, the alcohol burning a little as it ran down her throat, but not enough to discourage her from gulping down a bit more. 

“Easy,” Drew practically whined, peering at her from over his own much larger drink. He pulled the glass away from her lips. “I know it’s not strong but still .”

“It’s good,” she told him, reluctantly putting the drink on the table, and holding out her hand. “I wanna shoot it again.”

He smirked, though she wasn’t sure if his smugness was from her praise of the drink or her interest in his little invention. Either way, he passed the device over to her. 

“Aim for the… Aim for the door handle,” he laughed. 

She leveled the device against her shoulder, and asked, “Why are you calling it a cannon when it’s more of a gun?” before shooting it. The click came, but nothing happened. She turned to look at him, and he just laughed again. 

“Oh, yeah. Give it here.” As he dumped a handful of grapes into some strange looking compartment, she downed the last few sips of her drink. He snapped at her again to, “Slow down!” and ripped it from her hands. “I’m not going to give you anymore if you’re just going to chug it like that.”

“Sorry,” she offered, unapologetically. “It’s not my fault it’s delicious.”

He blushed, glancing away from her. “It’s better when I make it with homemade apple cider but I guess it’s good enough.”

She took the cannon from his outstretched hands, aiming it toward the door again. “Can I have some more?” 

“Just a little,” he agreed with an overdramatic sigh, before taking her glass and retreating to the kitchen. 

‘Just a little’ apparently meant double the amount he’d given her before. Glancing at his nearly drained cup she wondered how much of the stuff he’d really had before she caught him. Her suspicions were amplified ten-fold when he stumbled, smacking his hip on the table. He barely winced though she still had to snag the drink from his hand before any of it spilled. 

“How much have you had?” she demanded, almost instinctively. 

She’d had to walk a significant number of drunks home as part of her hero duty in the early years. Heath took over for her not long after she turned twelve. He’d run into her walking some man home, just in time to hear him offer her a beer or two in exchange for ‘an hour to do whatever the fuck I like to that perfect little body.’ She’d been near tears by the time she got home although she hadn’t even fully understood what the man was suggesting until a few months later when a similar scene played out in one of the horror films her parents forced her to watch. The situation had ended far worse for the young woman and Shea had melted one of her metal practice cubes, screaming and burning in horrified sympathy. It was the last movie she’d watched that she actually found frightening. 

“Not too much,” he replied, picking up his own glass and draining the last of it.

“Uh-huh…” She trailed a step after him as he refilled his glass to the brim, sipping at it carefully as he moved back to the table. She took a sip of her own, following him back. 

She barely saw him roll his eyes as he put the cup down. “Door handle?” he said hopefully, pushing his grape cannon toward her again. 

She grabbed it without putting her cup down and fired. The click was followed by the newly distinctive whistle of a grape flying across the apartment. Her aim was off, but not enough. The grape hit the door handle but she’d been hoping to hit it dead center. Drew still cheered, and she couldn’t resist shooting a smile his way. 

“Again!” he exclaimed, and she gulped down a sip of her drink before laughing and firing again. He was tugging the cannon away from her for his turn even before the grape splattered.

His first shot actually hit the door and she found herself cheering even before he did. His second missed and nearly knocked down a picture frame beside the door. He yelped as it wobbled, then sighed in obvious relief.

“Would you rather,” he mused suddenly, near half an hour and too many drinks later, “go live in the woods or… get to live in a mansion but never get to go outside again?”

“Woods.”

“Why?”

“Did enough of never getting to go outside already.”

“Oh yeah,” he said, almost laughing before awkwardly taking a sip of his drink. 

She knocked the rest of her own drink back. “What about you, Doc? Woods or a mansion?”

“Is not getting to go out really that bad?”
“Judging from how pale you are, I’d guess you don’t spend a whole lot of time outside anyway,” she teased, firing the cannon.

Drew whined in protest but didn’t actually defend himself much further. “It might be nice to live in a place that actually has heating in the winter. So, if it’s a nice mansion… I’ll take the mansion.”

“What if it’s some shabby run-down mansion? Or haunted?”

He fidgeted and snapped the cannon away from her. “Then I guess I’ll join you in the woods. Your turn.” Shea held out her hands to take it back, but he just shook his head. “No, I meant to ask a question.”

“Oh. Um… Would you rather,” she paused to think, watching as a grape exploded against the ceiling above them. “Would you rather get the chance to go back in time and change one major event but know that it will just happen later or…. Change one major event but erase yourself from existence in the process.”

“I would erase myself,” he answered the moment the words were out of her mouth. 

“What would you change?” she asked curiously. 

“Nothing you need to know about.” She must have looked hurt, because as soon as he said it he looked away from her, passing the gun sheepishly back over and adding, “Nothing I want to talk about.”

“I’d do the same one,” she told him. She wouldn’t mind disappearing if it saved her brothers from living the life they did. She would stop the comet and let herself fade away without anyone’s knowledge that there were ever going to be super-powered kids saving a city.  

She didn’t say that, but he nodded as if he understood anyway. 

“Would you rather be able to breathe underwater or breathe fire?”

“I thought we were flipping coins for this before.”

“We’re both answering, so who cares?”
Shea sighed and shook her head, pouring some of his drink into her glass, earning herself a glare and a refilled cup, still not quite as full as his had been. “I’ll take underwater. I’ve done the fire breathing thing. It just hurts your throat.”

“I thought you said you couldn’t breathe fire!”

“No,” she said pointedly, “I said I’m not a dragon. And no. I’m not showing you. It’s stupid and it hurts.”

“Come on, please?”

“No.”

“Pest.” Drew’s next fire of the grape cannon finally knocked the picture frame to the ground with a strangely loud shatter. His mood shifted almost instantaneously before the picture even hit the floor. If she’d been a little more focused she would have lunged for it, but as it was they both simply stood there and watched it fall.

He groaned as it broke, putting out a hand to stop her when she stepped toward it. “Glass,” he pointed out, though his voice sounded off. It took Shea a moment too long to realize his speech was more slurred than she’d realized.

He stepped carefully over the pieces of broken glass after pushing the cannon into her arms. Despite his repeated warning, she dropped the device on the table and moved toward him. She barely caught him slip something from the back of the frame into his pocket. 

“What is that?” she asked, grabbing onto his arm. 

His instantaneous, “Nothing,” caught her off guard, and she was quick to let go of him when he jerked his arm away. “She’s going to be so upset,” he murmured, tugging the picture free of the frame and stumbling his way over to the couch.

“Who is?” Shea asked, scooping up the glass. She could almost appreciate the bandages, for helping her to not cut up her palms. 

“My mother,” he replied, holding up the photo for her to see. 

Squinting at him from the kitchen she could see a picture of a woman with a young boy. “Is that you?” she asked tossing the wrapped up glass shards into the trash can.

“Sure, when I graduated high school. I was twelve here.”

“Why’d it take so long for you to go to college?”

She watched Drew’s shoulders move in a strange little shrug. “She didn’t want me to go off to college too early, so I homeschooled for a few years. It was probably a good thing, what with my not being able to read.”

“Did you always look like a dork?” she asked.

He dropped the photo on the coffee table. “Decide for yourself.”

This, Shea declared to herself, must be what if feels like to be drunk. Granted, she didn’t think she’d had all that much - and she was fairly certain he had been watering down every drink he’d given her. But the room was spinning a little, making her dizzy as she took slow, deliberate steps in his direction watching him take another swig of his drink.

A note of terror rang through her as her fuzzy mind cleared for the briefest of moments. He could have done anything to her drinks, anything at all, and she’d never even thought to be wary of it. She just… drank them as he handed them to her. As suddenly as it came, the terror was gone. He wouldn’t do that. She knew he wouldn’t do that. She’d known him for -what?- three days, four? She had no reason to trust him, not the way she did, but she did. 

“Yeah,” she said with a nod of her head towards the photo that made the spinning change directions. “You were definitely always a dork.” Twelve-year-old Drew didn’t look much different from the Drew she knew, save for the cap and gown that were both clearly too big and the innocent look of a pre-pubescent child. 

“Yes, thank you for that assessment,” he grumbled.

A laugh slipped out of her as she stumbled over air and collapsed onto the couch next to Drew. No, not next to him. On top of him. She fell into his lap, and in her daze, she forgot to make herself move off him. Even if she could have, his arms snaked around her, holding her against his chest though not in any real way, it felt like. Like he only did it because of instinct.

“Come on, come on, tell me the truth.” She realized he was laughing as she tried to process his arms around her. “Do you really think that rib-eye looked better than the salmon?”

She meant to say she did, but what came out instead was a gasp as she leaned back into him and poked his cheek slurring, “You should… you should make steak. I missed food. Didn’t even know I missed food ’til I met you.”

He chuckled and fell back across the couch. She hadn’t even noticed him push her off his lap. “Can’t afford to make that,” he said, gesturing to the TV. “But sure. Can make some sort of steak. Next week.” His fingers latched around her arm. “If,” he said pointedly.

“If what?” She asked, knowing she’d agree to just about anything in the moment. 

“If you show me how you can breathe fire.”

She should have said no. She knew she should’ve said no. With a quick snap of her wrist, she’d snagged Drews drink out of his hand and said instead, “You know you’re lucky I like you, right?”

His grin faltered so slightly that she almost didn’t notice it. She took a small sip of the drink, surprised to find it tasted no more like alcohol than any of hers had, and swirled it around in her mouth. 

Working the flames to her hands was easy. She’d focused on that, trained to do that for years. Working it up her chest and throat burned, making her eyes water. She almost gagged the plasma back down, but she took a deep breath in through her nose and tilted her face towards the ceiling.

Her powers didn’t come out like a dragon spitting flames in some cheesy kids movie. It bubbled between her jaws for a moment, like the world’s hottest mouthwash. She let out her breath, and with it, the plasma, burning through the air in a strange arc above her, before abruptly steaming out of existence.

She coughed and swallowed the residual flames. “It’s not effective and it hurts.” She coughed again, wiping her lips with the back of her sleeve. 

With a grunt, Drew sat back up and shocked her by poking at her lips. “That,” he admitted as she swatted his hand away in surprise, “was pretty cool.”

She felt a blush creeping up her cheeks. “Yeah, well. Y’better not be too drunk to remember it, cause I’m not doin’ it again.” 

“You said you like me,” he teased suddenly, breaking out into a wide grin. “You don’t really think I’m a dork.”

“Do so think you’re a dork,” she argued. “But… yeah. Still like ya. You’re… I dunno, fun?”

Drew hummed and lay back against the couch, facing her. “I like you too.”

“It’s weird,” she confessed, wishing the room would start spinning again to justify why she was still talking. “I feel like… cause we only met a few days ago. But–”

“–I feel like I’ve known you forever,” he said, in unison with her.

“Jinx,” he exclaimed, pointing a finger in her face. “You owe me a soda.”

“Do you have soda?”

“I think there’s some in the fridge.”

“I’ll get you one.”

“You’re just gonna shake it up, aren’t you?” Drew whined suspiciously.

She smirked, fighting back a full-on grin and nodded. “Yeah.”

“Then I don’t want one.” He yawned and pointed vaguely in the direction of the kitchen table. “I just wanna take my cannon and go to bed.”

“You’re gonna bring that thing to bed with you?”

“Nngh– no, I just don’t want you to shoot me with it!”

“You shot me!”

“I shot at you,” he corrected. “Accidentally!”

“So I should get to shoot at you.”

“No!”

“Dork.”

“Pest.”

“Crybaby!”

“You can keep insulting me,” he sang, “but I know you like me!”

Shea rolled her eyes, and before she could say anything else a strange gurgling sound filled her ears and then everything went silent. Ice cold terror burned in her veins as Drew’s mouth continued to move. No sound came out. No sound that she could hear.

Chapter Text

He had just been in the middle of saying she could shoot the cannon again before bed, just not at him, when her face went slack, almost scared, in a way he hadn’t seen from her in the few days they’d known each other. He reached out to her, worried he’d said something horribly wrong. Maybe enough for her to actually follow through on her threats to blast him - which she hadn’t done so far, but it scared him anyways. Or, as she’d persistently - insistently? - corrected him that morning, anyway. 

She knocked his hand away from her arm, and maybe it was his fault for touching her like that in the first place. He wasn’t sure how he’d let himself be goaded into drinking far more than planned but he was sure that he didn’t love the way the room flipped upside down as he watched her run off. Her bedroom door - since when did he declare it hers? - slammed shut, slamming him out of his stupor. 

He stumbled and staggered - shit he had class in the morning! What was he thinking? - to her door, and knocked loud enough to make himself flinch. Not loud enough, apparently, to make his runaway roommate open her door. 

“You could at least tell me what’s wrong,” he grumbled, leaning against the wall. His eye caught on the smattering of grape bits that still lined the door frame from when he’d accidentally shot at her. He supposed now that he no longer lived alone he was going to have to get used to the fact that someone else could very easily walk out of their room while he was working. He’d have to stop being so easily startled. Even if it was four in the morning - at least he thinks it was - when she joined him. Was she really mad at him for that? 

“Shea?” Drew called, growing a little worried by her lack of response. She clearly didn’t like being cared for or worried about but he couldn’t help it. She was just so… so small. And everything she said about her parents made him feel all weird and wobbly inside like he needed to make up for it somehow. He wasn’t even sure if he actually— Oh, screw it. It wasn’t worth the effort to try and say he didn’t like her. He did. He was sure he did. What he didn’t like was just how… good it felt to know she liked him too. 

He knocked a third time, shaking his head and reminding himself that she was only sixteen. A child, no matter how often (or loudly) she said otherwise. 

When his offer of, “I’ll let you shoot me if you just tell me what’s wrong,” failed, he found himself doing the one thing he’d mentally sworn not to do from the moment he asked her to stay - he opened her door without permission. 

A fluttery sense of relief coiled in his chest as he blinked hazily into her room, and spotted her pacing, thankfully still fully clothed, along the side of her room with her back turned to him. He took a cautious step into the room, her name slurring off his tongue yet again. Something in her body language made him want to reach out and hug her, and also turn and run the other direction and just leave her be. He reached a hand out to her instead as he stepped closer, but dropped it, his fingers curling around air before he could touch her.

“Did I do something?” he asked softly and was immediately grateful that the alcohol flowing through him had made his speech so slurred - he’d come to understand rather quickly (easy to do when she frightened and intrigued him the way she did) that being spoken to in any gentle way made her feel like she was being treated like a child. Which she didn’t like. At all. Even less than she liked cantaloupes, however that stupid word was spelled. 

His emotions played tug-o-war inside him, between concern and annoyance as she simply continued to pace, not bothering to turn a few inches and acknowledge him. 

“Shea,” he whined - he didn’t mean to whine, damn it - inching further into the small bedroom. “Come on, you can even shoot me twice if you’re so upset if you just tell me what’s wrong!” 

Not even a twitch. 

What was wrong with her?

What was wrong with him?  

“We can borrow another horror movie if you want,” he offered, pleading more than anything. He found himself crawling up to kneel on the edge of her bed, inches away from where her pacing had come to a pause, staring outside the window at an odd angle, like she was looking for something. Or, more likely he assumed, deliberately not looking at him. “Shea, come on, I know you can hear me. This is getting childish.” Even his goading wasn’t getting her attention.

He watched the back of her head as she dragged her hands over her face. Maybe like she was wiping away tears? Or maybe rubbing at her eyes in annoyance? He wasn’t great at other people’s emotions as it was… being drunk didn’t help. She didn’t seem like the type to cry, but maybe that was just because he cried too much and her personality was a far cry (ha!) from his - or at least she tried to make it seem that way. She did kind of confess to having liked Elements of Robotics which had to be the geekiest show (science-wise) he had ever watched. And she even outright stated that she enjoyed Fancy-Free so maybe she wasn’t as much… not a dork as she wanted to seem. 

“What do I have to say to make you knock this off?” he snapped, annoyance only very-much momentarily breaking out from behind his concern.

He sighed every last breath of air out of his lungs - How many molecules of carbon dioxide left a persons’ body every time they breathed out? Did it depend on how slowly they breathed or their lung capacity? What about breathing out through their mouth or their nose, did that change it? - and let himself slump down. He was pouting and he knew it, and he knew he should care because he was twenty-one years old and just a few years from being a doctor and doctors shouldn’t pout, but he didn’t care even a little bit. 

“Is this… Is this because of the whole kidnapping thing?” Nothing. “Are you that worried about having to go home?” He sighed again, his fingers twitching. He wanted to reach out to her, to comfort her the way he’d always preferred to be comforted, with hugs and cocoa moo and… “Do you want hot cocoa m– um… Hot cocoa? I won’t make you talk if you don’t want to, you know.”

Shea’s own shoulders slumped and she slowly turned toward him, the heels of her hands (what a weird term… he didn’t want hands to have heels) pressing into her eyes. He sat up a little straighter, a bit more proud of finally getting her attention that he maybe should have been.

She dropped her hands, opening her eyes. And then she took in a sharp breath of air through her nose - how much oxygen did she just breathe in? - her eyes going wide, as if she were somehow surprised to see him. In the exact same instant, her hands shot out, smacking into his shoulders and sending him sprawling off the opposite side of the bed. 

He yelped as he fell, which certainly wasn’t as masculine a sound as he would have preferred to make. He scrambled to his feet and fixed his glasses, glaring her way, despite being very glad she was at least acknowledging him again. 

“What was that for?” he demanded. Not that she seemed to take any of his demands seriously. And not that he wanted to be super demanding. 

A different sort of concern, the kind that made his stomach get all flippy and made his fingers twitch, replaced the confused concern that had had full control over him the moment before. She bit her lip, staring at his with her eyes still wide in a way he supposed would be funny if it didn’t make him so nervous. His eyes flicked across her - not in a creepy way! - as she stood frozen before him, her mouth working a bit like she wanted to say something and couldn’t. She looked alright, the only thing worthy of note was her hand dangling at her side, clutching something little in a closed up fist, hiding whatever it was from him. 

“What is that?” he asked, immediately distracted. Her eyebrows only furrowed together. She looked cute when she– Sixteen! She’s sixteen! He pointed at her fist and she glanced down, before taking a hurried step away leaving her with her back pressed up against the wall. 

She looked… scared. What had he done to scare her? Had he said something he shouldn’t have? Was it because he’d said he liked her? But she said it first! And it wasn’t like he’d meant it in any way that she hadn’t seemed to mean it… He just… liked her company, he supposed.

“Shea?” he asked, finding his hands floating up in a sort of surrender/innocent gesture of their own accord. She bit her lip again, then sighed, the first sound she’d made since first running away from him on the couch. With a small step that almost entirely closed the distance between them, she held up her hand. She seemed reluctant, but she slowly uncurled her fingers from around what she was holding, letting him see. 

It took him a moment to place what he was seeing since he’d only seen something like it a few times in his life - mostly at Christmas when his extended family came to visit. His… second cousin? had them too. Although he suspected, given the understanding that she was at least fairly wealthy, hers had been paid for unlike Georgie’s. Georgie had been randomly selected for a trial of a new design - he hadn’t minded being a test subject one bit… though he’d also only been two. Still, they’d worked and the few times he and Georgie - George by now, Drew supposed since he must be fifteen or so - had met, Drew had never seen him without them. Of course, that meant he’d also never seen them off, either, which made him forgive himself for not recognizing them right away.

He tapped the two tiny devices with drunken curiosity. Had she been wearing them since they met? Why did she take them… 

“Are they broken?” he blurted, and then immediately started to blush. Obviously she couldn’t hear him… And, thankfully, that meant she may not have heard anything else he’d said to her. Especially thankfully to his comment that he knew she could hear him. No, she couldn’t. No wonder she pushed him off the bed! She hadn’t actually known he was there! It probably shouldn’t have felt so good to know he could startle her, especially when she looked so upset. Traces of guilt mingled with guilt-worthy giddiness. 

Shea pointed at her ear with her free hand, obviously telling him she couldn’t hear. I might be able to fix these, he thought, without actually opening his mouth to try and speak and make himself look even more ridiculous. At least he was drunk. That always made for a good excuse. 

Gesturing in a way he could only hope conveyed his desire to take a look, he held his hand out. Shea’s jaw worked - She could still talk, couldn’t she? - without sound again, and she slowly, almost looking scared again, dropped the external transmitters for cochlear implants into his palm. 

Part of him wondered in a sort of absent-minded way if she had styled her hair to cover her ears the way it did to hide them. He didn’t understand why if she had. They were cool! And then her comment about not wanting to trust anything he called cool rammed into that thought like a freight train and he decided he wasn’t going to say that to her if he could fix them. 

He looked them over, wishing he was more familiar with the fairly obscure technology - it would make it much easier to fix. But he could fix anything! That’s what his mother had boasted during the heatwave the summer before his first year of college when a whole bunch of his neighbors flocked to him to fix fans and air conditioning units and once noteworthy...ily… a refrigerator. 

He’d made fifty dollars in a week and was even given an old beaten up bicycle which he’d promptly traded to his older cousin Eddie for his Mighty Martian action figure collection. Eddie had laughed later about how he was planning on giving them to Drew anyway, too grown-up for ‘toys’ as he claimed to be, but Drew didn’t think the trade had been half bad for him. What was he going to do with an un-rideable bicycle, with bent handlebars and rusty chains, that was way too big for him anyway? Just like Eddie would have given the action figures right over to him, he would have been perfectly content to pass the bike over without question. 

Of course, the downside was that Eddie fixed the bike and managed to sell it for another fifty bucks. Drew had spent an entire day calculating how much the action figure collection was worth to make himself feel better about losing out on the extra cash. (It was worth almost two thousand dollars, all because Eddie had always been good at goading people into trades, even if he didn’t care about what he was trading for. Not that it really mattered since Drew was never going to be willing to sell any of it anyway.)

With a shake of his head, Drew forced himself to refocus on the devices in his hand. They’d gotten wet, at some point, he realized as he gave one a quick shake and droplets of water splooshed out onto his fingers. He almost opened his mouth to ask what happened, before remembering and turning on his heel (which belonged on feet, not hands) and starting the walk to his own bedroom. 

She trailed after him by no more than a step or two, following him in a way that was even more stray-puppy like than the night they had met. He shot her a small smile, hoping he could convey his confidence that he could fix them up for her. She only shrunk in on herself, hands stuffed in her pockets and looked away from him. His smile dropped and he turned away himself to step into his room. 

There was no real reason for him to not let her in, but he was tempted to shoo her out anyway as she followed him. A glimpse of her face made him decide not to. Her gaze was fixated on his hands, on her external transmitters, and she was wringing her own hands and biting at her lip and if she was as scared as she looked he couldn’t just make her go away. She didn’t even look like she fully realized that she was standing in his room, and she made no move to come in any further than to hover over him when he took a seat at his desk, so he decided it was fine. It really didn’t matter. 

As he started looking the transmitters over, calculating the best way to begin repairs on them he was reminded of the joke his father used to make when he was little. He used to say there were two people inside of Drew’s tiny body. There was the one who couldn’t pay attention to anything at all, not even a little bit - the one who had a million and two questions to ask unrelated to what was actually happening. And then there was the one that focused too much. The one that couldn’t be distracted by anything at all until whatever he was working on was done. Once, when he was maybe three he’d decided to build a spaceship out of blocks and cardboard boxes, and when his mother came to pull him away and make him eat his dinner with the family he had pitched a fit, screaming and crying and kicking and when he’d finally been allowed to go back, he knocked the whole thing down, so upset that he couldn’t make himself remember exactly where the next piece had been about to go.

The second person took over almost instantly, and his focus wasn’t taken away from his new little project even when Shea helped herself to sit on the corner of his desk or when she started rummaging through his notebooks. Well, he noticed it and smacked her hand away, but he only noticed it in the back of his mind. He didn’t notice the note she slid across the desk at him until she smacked his shoulder. 

It took him a moment longer than it should have to make out “What are you doing? ” scrawled across a loose sheet of paper in perfect handwriting. He began grumbling out an answer, before stopping halfway through. Stupid. 

He snatched the pencil from her hand and wrote “FIXING” in all capitals (it was easier that way) below her question, relieved when she didn’t smack him to get his attention again. Mostly because of the focus, but also because it hurt. He suspected she might not realize how strong she actually was. Or he was weaker than he suspected, which would be embarrassing. 

Once he found a way to crack them open where they would reseal without needing so much as a drop of glue, drying off the transmitters took precedence… Which he did by unprofessionally dabbing at the insides with the fabric of his shirt. Whatever. If she complained he could still point out that he was drunk. Which, actually, was a little concerning, because he might be more likely to mess things up that way, but he was too drunk to even care about that.  

One part of the internal mechanism had completely fried, which was a shame. He needed some small piece of metal to replace it, he determined. Without any tools to cut metal on hand, he couldn’t… His body caught up to his brain before he had even caught up to his brain, and he found himself turning to snatch the pencil from Shea’s grasp again. It took a little bit more effort than he’d hoped but he eventually managed to snap the little piece of aluminum away from the eraser end of the pencil. It took even more effort, and some even further-from-professional biting, to gnaw off a piece that was the right size to replace the part that had been severely damaged.

The moment that was done, his mind snapped into a haze. He wasn’t sure - as always - if he even blinked the whole time he was completely zeroed in on fixing the devices. All he knew was that by the time he was done and looked up again, his eyes were burning, the sun was threatening to rise outside his bedroom window, he wasn’t sure if he needed to use the bathroom worse than he needed some water, and Shea looked absolutely adorable. 

She had dozed off at some point, still sitting on his desk with her head leaned up against the wall and her arms pulled across her chest. He didn’t mean to stare at her, and he didn’t stare for too long, but he couldn’t help it any more than he could help smiling at her as he did. She didn’t move much in her sleep aside from an occasional twitch of her fingers. She didn’t even snore, which was sort of frustrating. Logistically - logically? - he knew she wasn’t perfect. She still seemed perfect and that frustrated and scared and intrigued him. She didn’t even snore, for goodness sake! 

Shaking her awake, he decided as he began to squirm uncomfortably, would be something he did after he used the bathroom, and sprinted out of his room. 

She’d woken up after he left, he discovered with a startled scream when he stepped out of the bathroom a minute later to find her standing tensely outside, one hand raised as if to knock. Her shoulders slumped a bit, relaxing when she saw him. At least she didn’t hear him scream.

It was an impulsive movement brought on by his overeagerness to see if he’d managed to fix her transmitters, and therefore give her back her hearing, but he grabbed her hand and started to drag her back to his room. He couldn’t help but notice her slide her hand out of his grasp and cross her arms back over herself again, not cruelly or harshly, but she still did it. Commenting wasn’t worth it. What would he have even said?

He had to usher her back into his room as if she was only finally realizing that it was, in fact, his bedroom. He tried to not present the transmitters to her with too much of a flourish, considering he still didn’t know if he got them working again. From the way she rolled her eyes and smirked up at him, he must not have done a good job of not being pridefully dramatic.

Shea stared down at the devices, as he watched her hopefully. She took them from his outstretched hands, and instead of putting them back on then and there the way he had hoped, she grabbed them and ran off. He watched the bathroom door swing shut, and a moment later she’d clicked the lock shut, leaving him to anxiously pace the hallway as he waited for her. For a moment he debated making breakfast, but his stomach churned at the mere idea of food and he decided that that could wait until a more reasonable time. 

The very second he heard the bathroom door creaking open, he whirled around to face her, nerves wiping any trace of a smile clean off his face. That was, at least, until she shot him a small smile, her face a few shades greener than before. He couldn’t help breaking out into a grin, stopping his pacing a few steps away.

“Are they working now?” he asked, glad to not feel stupid for talking again. 

“Yeah,” she replied almost sheepishly with a quick, snappish nod. “Um… thanks. For– for fixing them. Can we…”

“What?”

“Just pretend you never saw them?” she finished so quickly and so quietly he could barely make out her words.

“Why?” he asked, mere curiosity earning him a glare. 

“Just… Don’t,” she grumbled– growled, really. 

“Shea?”

“Look,” she snapped at him, and he took a step away from her sudden wrath without really meaning to, “I’m enough of a freak already without this, okay? Nobody is meant to see them. Ever.”

“How long have you had them?”

“Drew…” Her voice sounded like a warning, a very tired warning, but a warning. 

That didn’t mean he had any self-control. “Well?”

Her eyes rolled to the back of her head, and if he wasn’t so fond of rolling his eyes himself he’d tell her they’d get stuck there. “What did you put in your pocket earlier?”

He felt his brow furrowing as he tried to figure out what she meant. Eventually, the only thing he could do was shrug.

“When you knocked down the photo of you and your mom,” she elaborated. “You put something in your pocket. What was it?”

He quickly shook his head as an understanding of what she wanted to know washed over him. “Nothing,” he told her, which he realized a moment too late was exactly what he’d said when she caught him the first time.

“Fine, but if you’re not going to tell me then you’re not allowed to even remember this happened, got it?”

“What do you expect me to do?” he asked, “Suddenly develop amnesia?”

Her hands flared up at her sides, and though she was quick to hide them behind her back he still felt suddenly wary, casually reminded that she could seriously hurt, maybe even kill him if she wanted. Somehow he suspected that she still never would.

“No,” she groused. “I just… Nobody is supposed to know, alright?”

“I won’t tell anyone,” he promised, hating how meekly his voice came out. 

Shea crossed her arms and slouched past him to throw herself down on the couch. “You’re not meant to know either.”

“Well, I’m glad I do,” he stated. And he was glad. If he didn’t know then she’d still be deaf and he’d still be terrified he had done or said something wrong and upset her. He was more glad that he’d been able to help, but that was beside the point. “Shea? I’m sorry, I don’t…” With a sigh he sat down on the opposite end of the couch, neither one making a move to look at the other. He slumped forward with his elbows on his knees, while she continued to glare in the direction of the kitchen, turned bodily away from him. 

It took five minutes of waiting, of hoping for her to break the silence and say something, for him to finally give in. “It was another picture,” he said, the words slip-sliding their way out of him, too quickly for him to decide to take back. 

At least she looked at him, even if it was with a calculated blank look on her face and a monotone, “What?”

“What I put in my pocket earlier. It was another picture.”

“Oh,” she said. 

“Does that make us even?”

“Not really. What’s it a picture of?”

Too late now… He reached into his pocket, glad to find he hadn’t accidentally folded or crumbled the wallet-sized photo in his working haze. She shifted closer to him at the same time he shifted closer to her, landing them with mere inches of space between them. He didn’t mind, and since she didn’t move away he wagered a guess to say she didn’t either. 

Even looking at the picture made him feel like someone had reached into his chest and ripped his heart right out. He hadn’t shown it to anyone since he was nine. It was nice, in a not-at-all nice way to show it to Shea. He held it low between them, and slowly flipped it over, willing himself to just let her see it. 

“Oh look, a fledgling dork,” Shea said, somewhere between laughing and sounding entirely unenthused. 

“I’ll have you know I was a full-fledged dork already, thank you very much,” he retorted, delighting in the smile she gave him and the brief peal of laughter that bubbled out of her. 

“That your dad?” she asked, her voice going soft as she pointed at the photo. Good thing she didn’t touch it - he may well have burst into tears… he had kept it so well preserved. 

Drew nodded and, deciding that thus far they had traded a secret for a secret, he told her, “It’s… It’s the last photo of just the two of us that we ever took.”

“How old were you here?” she asked, gently goading him. 

“Eight. This was just a few weeks before I turned nine.” He couldn’t even remember why the picture had been taken, there hadn’t been a special occasion. Just him, in a Mighty Martian t-shirt that fell down to his knees (one he still had tucked away in the very back of his closet for the absolute safest of keeping) and his father, in jeans and a striped polo shirt, working together to build a model rocket. 

“What… happened to him?” Shea murmured. 

Drew screwed his eyes shut, managing a shrug before letting out a shuddering breath. His words came out choked as he told her, “I don’t… really know. He just never came home one night after work just a few months after this was taken. He’d called to say goodnight to me as always since he didn’t get home from work until after I was asleep. But that night he said if I waited up for him we could watch a movie together since it was a Friday and I was a high school student. So I did. I stayed up all night but he never walked through the door.” He blinked back tears, hating that twelve years later he still wanted to cry. “The police spent half a year searching for him. My mother and I had to bury an empty casket.” 

He cautiously, nervously, terrified beyond reason...edly, risked glancing at her expression. He’d never told anyone before, about what had happened, too worried about how they’d react. In high school, rumors had been aplenty about Teddy Lipsky, the deadbeat who abandoned his wife and son, or about Teddy Lipsky, the poor soul who had been murdered so brutally they couldn’t even find the tiniest chopped up pieces of him. The first rumor would be hissed in his ear, “Even your dad doesn’t want you,” between classes, the second more cruelly recounted to him by Jack Bendtner - who had been a senior when Drew got to high school, and who Drew could only assume was still a senior - as he shoved him into lockers or dumped him into trashcans. 

Shea didn’t suggest either of those things had happened. She simply nodded and whispered a quiet apology. “That sucks,” she added, shrugging slightly. “Sucks to not know what happened, I bet. Or… does that help?”
“I don’t know,” he told her. “I’m not sure I want to know. I hope… whatever happened to him… It wasn’t too painful.” 

He watched her bite her lip again before she gestured vaguely then dropped her hands in her lap. “I got hit by the comet first. So, I guess when the explosion happened I was the closest to the– the center or something, I don’t know. All I know is by the time we stopped being dead I couldn’t hear anything, and then like a week later I had these things surgically implanted in my head and… Wow, magic, I could hear again… Well, after the third try.” 

“I’m sorry too,” he told her, only because it felt like the right thing to say. “If it makes you feel any better, I think they’re cool. You’re like an android!” Which was exactly what he’d told himself not to say to her… 

Despite her amused sounding scoff she glared at him. “Not helpful.”

“Well, I’d want to be an android.” 

“That’s because you’re a dork, dork.” 

He could only smile as he leaned to rest his head against the back of the couch. 

“You know what?” Shea said a few minutes later, looking more asleep than awake. “Being nine fucking sucked.”

He snorted in surprise at her curse but nodded anyway. “Fuck being nine,” he agreed. Her laughter really ought not have been as nice a sound as it was. And fuck going to class, he thought to himself as early morning sunlight reflected around the room. 

Chapter Text

The last thing he remembered super clearly was Shea thanking him again, in that gentle, nervous little way she did when she really meant it. He remembered opening his mouth to respond and then bolting off the couch instead. He hoped he’d actually made it to the bathroom before he’d been sick, taking the fact that he was lying on the floor with his cheek pressed against the cool tile as a good sign that he had. 

His blanket was thrown over him almost half-hazardly. That wasn’t right… Haphazardly. It was thrown over him haphazardly. As he curled his shaking fingers around the fabric and pulled the blanket tighter around himself he vaguely recalled Shea following him into the bathroom. 

He wasn’t sure if he’d begged her to go away or had just wanted to beg her to go away but he was sure that she’d gone and put a glass of water down by his hand and patted his hair in a way that bordered on genuinely sympathetic. And of course that made him a whole different sort of fluttery inside and he had to remind himself again that she was sixteen, and then he told himself that the fact that he had to keep telling himself that was… worrying. 

After poking his tummy a few times to be sure he wasn’t going to throw up again he dragged himself to his feet and wibble-wobbled his way out the door. He wasn’t exactly listing expectations, but seeing Shea dangling upside down over the back of the couch like a bat with a book in her hands wouldn’t have been high on the list if he was. 

The sight of her made him dizzy, and instead of the greeting he meant to say, he grumbled, “Would you sit properly? You’re making me nauseous.”

She scoffed but did some twisty-turny motion he couldn’t quite make out that landed her sitting up properly on the couch. “Happy?” she said, with that lilt to her voice that told him she was only teasing him. 

He grunted and staggered the rest of the way over before flopping onto the couch next to her. “My head hurts.”

“Yeah, I know. You’ve told me that at least once every hour since six this morning.” Shea laughed, but he didn’t see what was so funny, so he just glared. More grimaced at her really - the sunlight hurt his eyes. “Did you brush your teeth?”

In lieu of answering, he asked a question of his own, his fingers fluttering to his face as he realized there was more than just a hangover to blame for his blurred vision. “Where are my glasses?” He sounded whiny again. Why did he always sound so whiny? At least it didn’t seem to make her angry.

He had to stifle a gasp at her fingers grazing against his skin, as instead of answering she slipped his glasses over his face for him. Blinking away his shock, he reached up to fix them on his face, mumbling, “Oh. Um… Thanks.”

“You look better,” she commented dryly, and after catching her looking him over almost critically he was quick to look away. 

“Just do me a favor.” He pulled the blanket tighter, squeezing his eyes shut. “Don’t ever let me drink again.”

“Yeah, no kidding…”

He managed to crack one eye open just enough to glare at her which, as happened more often than not with her, made her smirk at him. “Please, tell me you at least got a little bit sick.”

Shea shrugged. “If you want me to lie to you I will, but…”

“You drank as much as I did!” Well, did she really? He wasn’t exactly sure how much he’d had to drink before she joined but he knew for a fact she’d been the one to finish his last glass when she was showing him how she breathed fire. “How could you not have gotten sick?”

She shrugged again. “I think my body may just burn off the effects if that makes sense. It happens with poison too.”

“With…?” He felt his eyes shoot open. “You’ve been poisoned before?”

Her face flushed a wonderfully alien shade of green, and she looked away.

“But you just said! Um… I mean…” He let his voice trail off at the look on her face. Gulping he asked instead, “Do you burn off medicine that same way?”

“No,” she repeated, grumbling under her breath.

“How is that–”

 “Some friend of yours called,” she informed him, quickly changing the subject despite the fact that he’d been smart enough to fall silent at her glare - even if she was lying to him. 

Drew blinked. “Who?” He didn’t exactly have a whole lot of friends, and the three he did have rarely called out of the blue. Maybe she misunderstood his mother or one of his cousins. Eddie, maybe? Smart as he was, and as much as Drew admired him, he tended to be loud and brash and rushed when he spoke, and he had a hard enough time understanding him even with perfect hearing. 

Shea paused for just long enough that he started to wonder if she was just lying to change the subject. Finally, with a one-shouldered shrug, she said, “I think he said his name was Robby or something? I dunno, the guy just started talking before I could say anything.”

“Bobby,” he corrected reflexively, then paused, blinking as surprised curiosity overwhelmed him and made his headache start to fade. So, it really was one of his friends. Strange that he would call, especially on a Tuesday of all days - if they did call it was on weekends, to talk about upcoming plans. Or sometimes for help studying, but it seemed too early for that. “What did Bobby want?”

“He was wondering if you were taking some dorky class with a name too long for me to bother remembering.”

“That’s not exactly– What time is it?” 

Shea reeled back, hopefully just surprised by his sudden shouting and not scared or angry at him for it. “A little before one,” she told him, snatching his wrist to shove his watch in his face. 

Nearly cursing his earlier reckless stupidity, Drew jumped off the couch. Well, he attempted to. It shouldn’t have surprised him that his foot caught on the blanket and he went tumbling face-first in the direction of the floor. He didn’t get the chance to scream before Shea had shot out her arms and caught him mid-fall with a hand planted on his chest. 

His ears were burning as he retreated to his room in an increasingly flustered rush. He could still hear her giggling about his tripping over the blanket a second time by the time he shut the door behind him, locking it for good measure. 

He hadn’t been so drunk earlier that he’d forgotten his inebriated decision to skip class, but he wasn’t so hungover now that he still thought it would be a good idea. It was only the second day of the semester! He couldn’t miss the second day! Especially considering his only class on Tuesdays’ was one his boss taught. 

Grape juice was reason enough to change clothes entirely and he nearly fell several more times yanking a clean pair of jeans on. Without looking he reached into his dresser to pull out a t-shirt, but the soft, worn-out feeling of the fabric made him slow down for just a moment. The Mighty Martian shirt he’d grabbed, still too big on him a decade and a half later, was reserved for only the worst of days. As much as it meant to him, he didn’t want to risk ruining it. 

Carefully folding it again, Drew turned and grabbed a white polo shirt, hoping it would help make him look a little more presentable. There was hardly enough time to brush his hair, let alone water it down to slick it back the way he liked it, so he needed any appearance boost he could get. Was that why robots needed to be so shiny? Because if they got rusted and dirty they’d be more evil-looking or scary? No, he decided, yanking the shirt over his head. No, they were shiny because being shiny is what made them scary. They were just too perfect. 

Perfect just like Shea when she smiled at him from her place on the couch. Perfect and scary. And yet somehow, he couldn’t resist smiling back, even as his brain pounded in his skull like it wanted to escape out his eyeballs. Ew. Another word to never use again, Drew decided. Eyeballs. Weird.

“Food,” he stated, realizing only after he did that he said it out loud. “Um… Have you had any?”

She hummed, though he couldn’t tell if she was answering him or just acknowledging that he’d spoken as she turned back to her book. Deciding she would eat if she got hungry - though the day before had disproven that theory - he poured himself a bowl of cereal, which he ate with one hand while attempting to tie his shoelaces with the other. 

Milk dribbled down his chin and his laces were more knotted than ever, but his real mistake came after he’d dumped his bowl in the sink. Well, it sort of came the night before, when he’d done his homework on the couch rather than in his room, and had been stupid enough to leave his backpack unzipped. But asking Shea to toss it in his direction certainly didn’t help.

He realized as she reached down for it that her looking inside would probably not end well for him. He never got the chance to tell her to wait. Sure enough, though she didn’t bother looking up when she grabbed it for him, the loose contents of his backpack spilled out as it hurtled through the air in his direction. Paper flyers fluttered to the ground much the same way fleets of spaceships on Mighty Martian and Captain Constellation landed, which was not a comparison he should have been mentally noting at that moment, all things considered. 

Just his luck, his notebooks and textbooks all stayed safely inside, and he ended up stumbling back a step as the still-heavy bag smacked him square in the chest, a yelp escaping him as he futilely tried to grab for the papers. Shea glanced up at the commotion. 

“I’m– Just let me!” Drew snapped in a panic, rushing forward to grab her hand in an attempt at stopping her from inspecting the papers. He missed completely, not that she seemed to have noticed him trying to stop her as she plucked one of the fluttering flyers out of the air.

“Ever heard of closing your—” Her voice cut off suddenly, and he risked a nervous glance at her face. She looked momentarily stunned as she stared down at the paper clutched in her hand, and her knuckles going a paler shade of green was a good indication that she was upset. He found himself scrambling backward even before she shoved the flyer toward him, furiously demanding, “What the fuck is this?”

He was fairly certain, for a brief moment, that her eyes were glowing with her anger, and he continued to move backward toward the door.

“I don’t– It wasn’t– I thought I– Nngh!” 

And with that he shoved open the door and fled, leaving Shea glaring at him from inside his apartment as he raced down the hall. He stopped running halfway down the first flight of stairs, his lungs burning already. There’d been no sound indicating the door had opened, so, for whatever reason, she wasn’t following him. 

Chastising himself for being such a coward all the while, he made his way to the bus stop, ripping yet another flyer from the billboard while he waited. Shea wasn’t stupid, he knew, so she knew exactly what she was seeing. He’d just hoped she wouldn’t have to see it, was all. He hoped even more that taking them down had been the right choice, even if not telling her what he knew wasn’t. 

He had figured out the truth the day they went to the library. Her story about getting struck by a comet had intrigued him, and having just seen her fascinating superpowers he was inclined to believe it. But he was sure something like that would have been reported. So, while she searched for books, he spent his time searching for… well, her. Her comet, at least. 

Drew rested his head against the cold window, despite the fact that it pressed his glasses into his face and knocked his head hard enough to hurt. He still didn’t understand how she’d made it all the way to Lowerton from someplace called Go City in seemingly just one day, but he hadn’t known how to bring it up. Even harder to bring up was Shego, which he’d been able to tell was her even with the mask covering her eyes in the glossy black and white photo. 

It wasn’t that he had a problem with it! The opposite, in fact! He wanted to talk to her about it. It was pretty cool, considering the coolest thing he’d ever done was… he wasn’t sure he’d done anything people considered cool. But she hadn’t brought it up, and he wasn’t sure she wanted him to know. 

He thought he was sure, at least, that she wouldn’t want flyers hung up everywhere they went. When he saw the first one on his way to class the day before, he’d ripped it down in a panic. And then he’d exhausted himself running around trying to find any others around MIST’s campus. He’d been strangely offended on her behalf when they all called for help finding Shego. Then he’d questioned if she just made up the name Shea so he wouldn’t figure out who she was earlier. He still wasn’t sure. 

All he really knew now, he thought as he wandered off the bus and in the direction of the neuroscience building, was that people were definitely going to want the reward attached to handing her in, he didn’t want her to disappear (even though she was a pest), and that, now, she was mad at him. And he really, really, didn’t want her to be mad at him. 

An arm thrown around him suddenly made him yelp, pulling him out of his thoughts about how he was going to explain himself to Shea when he got home. So long as she hadn’t run away… 

The shiny metallic rims of round glasses came into his view through the corner of his eye and Drew forced a smile at Bobby Chen who hardly spared him a glance as he dragged him faster toward the neuroscience building. “So, you are in Advanced Neurobiological Chemistry with me right, Lipsky?” Bobby asked. “I’m thinking I could use that brain of yours.”

“Sure, I am,” Drew muttered, only just paying attention to what was being said to him. 

Bobby elbowed him gently in the ribs, and he blinked, focusing his attention on him. “Family visiting or something? I tried calling, but you weren’t the one who picked up.”

“Oh, that was just my new roommate,” he explained, with what he was sure was an unnoticeable hint of resentment in his voice. He didn’t want to remain upset about his three friends ditching him all the way out in Lowerton for a house on the outskirts of Upperton, but he was hardly able to help it. It wasn’t even that he was mad at them, so much as at the fact that he couldn’t possibly afford to join them, even splitting the cost between the four of them. 

Although, he thought brightly, if he had moved in with them he never would have been able to meet Shea. So far, he didn’t think he’d make that trade. Sure, he was more than a little nervous about going home after class now, but he still liked her. She was interesting, even before the superpowers. There was just something about her that he was drawn to. Hell, even the night they’d met he had been secretly thrilled when she continued to follow him after he’d told her to leave him alone. 

“Your roommate sounded an awful lot like a girl,” Bobby said with a slight grin, and before Drew could point out that that was because she was, they’d entered the classroom and were immediately hushed and told to find seats. Cringing back slightly at the glares shot their way for the disruption - although class hadn’t officially begun yet - the two shuffled to seats at the side of the room, as close to the front as they could get, wearing matching blushes. 

“This will not be an easy class,” the accented voice of the professor declared, as he walked to the front of the classroom. “As students here at MIST, I expect all of you to be able to handle the work.” 

Dr. Cyrus Bortel, a short, dark-haired, man in his early forties, was a genius in every way, and Drew had never admired another human being more. Dr. Bortel had been the one to scout Drew out when he was just thirteen, offering free tuition for him to attend some of his introductory courses. 

Although it took a few years for his mother to agree, the offer was never dropped. In exchange, Drew had had the privilege of working alongside him since his very first day of college. Sure, sometimes he wished his tasks went beyond grading, fetching lab equipment, and teaching the occasional lecture, but he still knew he was incredibly lucky to watch the man work at all. Not to mention the perk of practically being paid to attend college. 

“You can come to me if you’re ever struggling,” Bortel droned on. Much as Drew admired him, even he couldn’t find a way to make syllabus day entertaining. “There is no TA in this course, however,” the man wandered towards where Drew sat, gesturing to him briefly, “I trust Mr. Lipsky here to be of aid to any student who needs it if you ever cannot reach me.”

Drew gave a tense nod at his mentor, and then another in the direction of the room, hoping his ears weren’t as red as they felt. He pushed his glasses up higher on his face, as Bobby snickered beside him and gave his arm a light shove as the professor walked away. 

Twenty minutes later, having learned little more than if Dr. Bortel would accept late work (he wouldn’t) and if he would be giving assignments every week (he would), Drew found his eyes closing against his will. Exhaustion combined with the panicked nerves still making his heart thunder inside his chest at sporadic moments seemed to catch up to him all at once. 

The next thing he knew, he felt someone kick his shin under the table and his whole body went rigid as he blurted out, “I’m sorry!” Giggles started up from the few tables around him, but the rest of the room hadn’t seemed to notice his nodding off. 

“At least you don’t snore,” Bobby mumbled to him with a shrug, as he wiped drool off his cheek. It was of little comfort (though he appreciated the effort) as Dr. Bortel’s gaze turned to him. 

Drew gulped. The only time he’d been yelled at by a teacher of any sort had been when he was seven. He’d bitten another child who’d been sitting in the waiting room at the speech therapist's office. He still stood by the fact that the kid had deserved it, but his therapist had screamed and screamed at him until he was crying even more than the boy with teeth marks in his arm. 

He resided himself to being yelled at by one of his favorite people in the world, willing away tears already. But then, Dr. Bortel just shook his head, laughing as he said, “I told you, you didn’t need to grade those exams so quickly, Drew. Look at you, you’ve exhausted yourself!” 

He shrugged meekly back in response, perfectly content to accept that over shouting. 

As the class came to an end, Bortel waved goodbye to the students as they shuffled out past him, giving Drew a pat on the back as he walked by which made Bobby snicker, “Teachers’ pet,” under his breath. Much as he knew he was kidding, it still worried Drew to think others would see him as a suckup. Teachers had always liked him and typically that meant students… well, didn’t. Thankfully nobody else said a word to him if they paid him any mind at all.

Bobby’s arm came to rest on Drew’s shoulder, and he slumped a bit to allow it. “Are you joining the rest of us for lunch, Drew?”

He almost agreed. He almost agreed for the sheer fact that he didn’t want to go back to his apartment and explain himself to Shea. But that same fact was exactly what had him shaking his head and saying, “No, no. I um… I need to talk to my roommate about something, actually. Tomorrow though!”

“We’re all busy tomorrow,” Bobby sighed. “But we’ll be over at your place on Saturday, right? Your… roommate won’t mind?” 

Something about the way he hesitated before saying, “roommate” made Drew pause. It almost sounded like he didn’t believe he had one. He dismissed that thought as quickly as it came. He had no reason to disbelieve him. He’d even spoken on the phone with her! Just because she wasn’t paying rent didn’t mean it didn’t count. Not that Bobby knew that, he assumed. 

“I’ll ask,” he said. “I’m sure it’ll be fine.” He hoped so at least. They always got together on Saturdays to watch the newest episode of Captain Constellation and play Hideaways and Hydras. 

Worse, he remembered halfway to the bus stop, tearing down three more flyers on his way, was the possibility that she was already gone. He didn’t know, though it had only been a few days, how he was meant to move on if she’d decided she didn’t trust him anymore. If she was gone… He didn’t know what he’d do with himself. They’d never even gotten to get their ice cream…

Running the rest of the way to the bus stop did absolutely nothing to get him back to the apartment any faster, considering he still had to wait for the bus. Of course, he managed to forget that. Some genius he was! He bounced from foot to foot the entire time he waited, at least until an older woman asked him if he “needed to go potty,” which embarrassed him enough to make him sit down and wring his hands until his bus arrived. He all but threw himself down in the back seat, deliberately avoiding eye contact with the old woman. 

He moved as fast as he could while still being able to breathe, all the way back to the apartment. Six flights of stairs later, he cautiously tried the door. It was closed now, unlike when he left, but it was still unlocked.

The creak of the door as he pushed it open made Drew cringe. Coming face to face with Shea standing cross-armed and clutching a fistful of the flyers in her hands on the other side of the door made his mouth go drier than the surface of Mars. 

“Hello,” he managed, his voice croaking like a frog going through puberty. Ha. If she didn’t hate him he’d have to remember to tell her about that thought. She’d probably think it was funny too… eventually. At the moment she didn’t exactly look ready to laugh at anything. She just thrust the flyers at his chest - more pushing him than anything else - knocking him back a step. Her quirked eyebrow was perhaps the only indication he had that she was giving him the chance to explain himself. “Can I– Can I come in?”

“It’s your apartment,” she muttered, sarcastically gesturing him inside.

“We should change your bandages,” he blurted, pointing at her hands, still bandaged from the small fire the night before. He knew he was jabbering in what he also already knew was a terrible attempt at getting out of the upcoming conversation. 

The flyers still clutched in her hand caught fire and fell around their feet in a pile of ashes. She tore the in-tact bandages off her left hand, throwing them at him. “My hands are fine and you know it!” Shea said, in a low voice that he decided was far worse than if she’d yelled at him. “What else do you know?”

Drew squeaked and moved away from her a few steps. “I… I know you aren’t an alien.” Now that he thought of it, he was surprised the idea hadn’t occurred to him before he’d looked her up. “I was only trying to help,” he pleaded, holding his hands up in surrender. Her glare softened, fading just enough for him to risk stepping closer, repeating himself as he reached a hand out toward her. 

She stepped away from him as if suddenly he were the one with dangerous superpowers. It made him want to cry even more than the fear of Dr. Bortel yelling at him had. “You know,” she snapped at him like a… like a snapping turtle, “it makes sense that I wouldn’t know how to bring this up but you knew. You knew and didn’t say anything. And here I was planning on telling you the truth like some kind of idiot.”

“I was going to! I was going to tell you! I’m sorry,” he pleaded. The sight of her eyes brimming up with tears - more out of anger, it seemed, than out of sadness - made his own begin to fill up too. He feared his chance to explain had been lost. 

At least when she stormed away it was into her bedroom, the door slamming childishly behind her, rather than out of the apartment and out of his life altogether. 

Chapter Text

It took precisely twelve minutes of trying to explain himself to her door for Drew to give up and retreat into the kitchen. He wondered briefly if she’d just turned her implants off so she wouldn’t have to listen to him. Remembering how upset she’d looked the entire time they were broken, he dismissed the thought. He couldn’t imagine she would do that by choice.

Thirty minutes after he’d given up trying to coax her out of her room, the smell of his freshly baked peanut butter stickies did the trick. He knew they would. She darted in and out of his personal space, snapping the tray from his mittened hands before he could so much as blink. As she moved away from him, she popped a piping hot fresh-from-the-oven cookie into her mouth. His warning that they were hot died on his tongue when she didn’t so much as flinch - clearly, she could handle higher temperatures just fine. 

Knowing that didn’t stop him from gently prying the tray from her hands before she could blister them up again. He took the fact that she let him as a good sign. Or at least… not a bad sign.

“I really am sorry, Shea,” he said for what had to be at least the tenth time. She grunted, granting him only the faintest trace of acknowledgment. He decided it was better not to stop her when she scooped the tray back up and all but stomped over to plop down on the couch. He followed - giving a cautious few steps worth of space - and sat in the chair across from her, lacing and unlacing his fingers. She bit into a second cookie and the swell of pride that blossomed in his chest at the fact that she clearly liked them had him reaching for one for himself. Without even bothering to turn her head she swatted his hand away with a quick smack, like his old speech therapist striking his knuckles with a ruler.

“Mine,” she snapped, as he hastily retracted his hand. At least she was eating, he thought, with a slight roll of his eyes. Despite the fact that she was glaring at the TV with such malice that he worried she’d blow it up with her mind, her voice was quiet when she spoke again a few minutes later, mumbling, “We’re out of strawberries.”

He froze with his fingers locked together, startled by her statement. “You ate the entire–? I mean… Um… We can get more next week,” he began to say, but Shea was shaking her head before he finished speaking. 

“No,” she protested. In a weird way, it was nice to see her acting like a normal teenager. Even if that did come with grumpy, grumbly demands. “I want more now.”
Unsure if he should be mentally sighing or mentally grinning, Drew reminded himself once again that at least Shea was eating. “Fine. I’ll get more tomorrow.” Her lack of response outside of an annoyed sounding and entirely incoherent grumble made him add, “I’ll even go before class if you just talk to me!”

Her glower moved from the TV to him and he couldn’t help pressing himself back into the chair as if he could phase right through the fabric to safety. “There’s nothing to talk about.” 

Gulping past the fear forming a lump in his throat, he managed a choked, “Shea–”

“I’m not talking until I have more strawberries.”

At least she stopped glaring at him with that murderous look in her eye. 

Taking a risk he let his eyes dart around the room, looking for the sweatshirt he’d lent to her the last time they went out. Spying it on the back of her chair in the kitchen, he stood and retrieved it. She was watching him coldly, another half-eaten cookie held up to her lips. 

“Then let's go,” he said, stepping in front of her and dropping it into her lap. He would have laughed at her flabbergasted expression if he wasn't so worried it would send her over the edge and make her decide to blast him. Briefly, he considered how lucky he'd been that she had been desperate enough for a place to go that she hadn't followed through with her threat to hurt him the night they met.

“I'm not going with you,” she protested, flinging the sweatshirt to the ground. 

Hoping she didn't notice his nerve fading as he took a step back, he forced himself to shrug. “Fine, then I'm not getting you any strawberries.” 

Not that he would admit it to her, but he did have two… fairly fair… reasons for not wanting to leave without her. The first was just that, on principle, he thought if she wanted something she should at least be with him to get it. The second was that it was quickly getting dark outside earlier in the evening - in synchronization with the cooling September air. And to be honest with himself, the idea of going out this late made him nervous. He figured she was more capable of defending herself than he was, so going out without her to, well… protect him was out of the question. By now, she must have figured out that he didn't exactly live in a great area.

Her chest heaved, her nostrils flaring, and he took another hurried step back, no longer caring if she noticed his fear. Staring at him, Shea loosened her grasp on the tray of cookies and let them unceremoniously clatter to the ground. 

Again, he was tempted to laugh. There was something so wonderfully childish about her way of expressing her emotions. She might get annoyed with him for pointing out how young she was, but he found it endearing, in its way. As much as he enjoyed her company over the last few days, something about her that he found deeply unsettling vanished only when she behaved the way he was used to teenagers behaving - which he supposed was to say when she did anything other than sitting or reading in silence. She always looked like... She looked as if she were waiting to be told what to do with herself. He found that odd, to say the least.

She muttered something under her breath that he couldn't quite make out, but before he could ask what she'd said, she sniffled and knocked their shoulders together in her hurry to push past him. He let himself wonder only briefly if she was crying before he darted toward her, grabbing her arm.

 Jerking out of his grasp she turned to glare at him again. Her eyes looked a little watery, he thought. Not enough to say she was crying though.

“Don’t touch me,” she ground out, her gaze dropping to fixate on the floor instead of his face. 

“I should have told you I knew,” he sighed, holding up his hand in surrender and as a promise not to touch her again. 

“Stop that!” Shea blurted. 

“Stop what?” he demanded, annoyed, and confused, and annoyed that he felt confused. “Trying to apologize?”

She threw her hands up, all but shouting, “Yes!” as if that should explain everything she was feeling. 

“You know what?” he muttered, turning his back on her to make his way back to the couch. “I know I messed up with the– with the flyers, but I don't know what you want from me.” 

Truly, he thought, he would never fully understand other people. But perhaps that had simply been the fault of attending high school from the age of nine. He never did interact much with people his age, let alone anyone younger than him. Then again, maybe she was just confusing. Shouldn’t she be happy that he was trying to make sure she wasn’t found? Or… or did she secretly want to go home? Maybe she was hoping her family would find her. That thought stung in a strange way, so he pushed it from his mind before he could get upset about it. 

“I want strawberries,” she said, and he thought it almost sounded like she was trying to make a joke. He wasn't sure if laughing would just be setting himself up for getting shouted at again. 

"Yeah well, either you come with me or you're not getting them," he muttered, kicking a piece of a broken cookie out of his way and falling back into the chair. "So, there," he added, putting his own childish spin on the situation by sticking his tongue out like a petulant toddler. 

Embarrassed by the impulse as he was, he was glad it at least got a quiet snort out of her. A hint of a smile formed on his own face at the sound, even though he tried to resist it. 

“I don't want to go with you,” she muttered insistently. 

“If you're so mad at me that you don't want to go with me then why won't you just let me apologize?” he argued. 

“I don't want to go because I'm already putting you into danger just by– by existing near you, you idiot!”

Rearing back from the sudden increase in volume, he gawped at her. “You're mad at me because... you're dangerous?”

“No,” Shea denied, her voice dropping to a mutter as she shuffled back toward the couch and stooped to clean up the broken cookies. “I’m mad because... because... I don’t know!” 

He didn’t say a word, hoping his silence would goad her into finishing her thought. Miraculously, he was right.

Sitting cross-legged on the floor with her gaze averted and his sweatshirt clutched to her chest like a childhood blanket - which he told himself was not cute - she confessed, “I’m just mad that... that you know who I am. I... It was nice, okay? To think someone could like... I don’t know, me and not Shego. And I’m mad that... that I didn’t tell you even though I knew you could get hurt because of who I am. And I’m mad that I was stupid enough to hope you wouldn’t find out before I told you. And just– forget it. All of this is so stupid.”

For a moment he managed only a feeble, “Oh,” as he processed what she’d said. “You– You know I’m not mad. I get why you wouldn’t want to tell me. And really, I don’t know anything about... um... about Shego, except that that's your... superhero name?” 

With another seemingly rapid change of emotion - at least, as far as he could understand her emotions, she sniffled. “I– I get it if I’m not worth the risk,” she choked out, and this time he was more than certain she might start crying. If she hadn’t just yelled at him not to touch her he might have even tried to hug her. 

“Not...? Shea, I’m not going to kick you out just because you didn’t tell me about– about all that,” he promised in a rush of reassurance. Strange as he knew it was, there was no part of him that wanted her gone. 

“That isn’t what I meant. It’s not about me not telling you,” she insisted with a shake of her head. “It’s– You could get hurt, Drew! Or someone could decide to blame you for my running away - they’ll say you kidnapped me if you get caught!”

“Will you just come with me?” he interrupted, hoping to stop her from talking before her words could go to his head and make him as worried as she seemed to be. “Why don’t we just...? Let’s just go buy more strawberries and you can see that everything is fine and you’re no more dangerous than anything else.”

“But I am more dangerous!” Her hands flared at her sides and he wasn’t sure if she was attempting to prove her point or if she didn’t have as much control over the flickering green flames as he’d first thought. “You don’t know what my family will do for the team.” She sneered at those words as if personally offended, disgusted even, by them. 

He risked tossing the sweatshirt to her again and her fire quickly went out as she caught it. “So, come with me. Fill me in on the way.”

“Just forget it,” she muttered. “They don’t matter.”

They, he thought, weren’t precisely what she was trying to claim didn’t matter. He couldn’t tear his eyes away from her face, waiting in wonder to see if she would begin to cry or if her claim that she wasn’t a crier was true. As it was, it had been a long time since he had seen someone look so confused and distressed. And he certainly didn’t want to think about the previous times.

“Are you still mad?” he questioned, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose before he could start tearing up himself, at the very thought of seeing Shea cry.

“I don’t know!”

He sighed. “Can we please just go so I can buy you more strawberries and at least pretend to make up for not telling you?”

“Still doesn’t make up for me not telling you.”

“It does if you come with me!” He stood as she slipped the sweatshirt on, throwing the hood up with one final glare in his direction that most certainly did not make him flinch ever so slightly. Grinning back at her, he sifted through his backpack for his wallet and hurried to the door when he realized she’d already stepped into her shoes and was waiting for him.

“You aren’t allowed to blame me if something goes wrong,” she informed him. 

Watching her stuff her hands into the pockets of his sweatshirt, he had a suspicion he wouldn’t be getting it back. It didn’t really matter, he supposed. He did have one other sweatshirt, which he liked better anyway. And letting her keep that one stopped them from having to spend the money to buy her her own as the weather continued growing colder. Not to mention how cute she–

He shook that thought away and glanced away from her as he promised that he wouldn’t blame her if something were to go wrong. Although he would have liked to have promised that nothing would go wrong at all, he couldn’t say that for sure and it seemed extra wrong to lie to her when his whole afternoon had already been spent worrying about her being mad at him for doing so.

“To the grocery store!” he declared, thrusting his keys into the air as he followed her out of the apartment. It would have been easy to miss her lips quirking up in a small smile if he hadn’t been looking to make her laugh in the first place. She was quick to bite her lip and force the smile away. 

“Uh-huh,” she answered instead, rolling her eyes at him. Slouching even more than before, she drifted a step or two behind him the entire way out of the building no matter how many times he slowed down in hopes of letting her catch up. 

The further down the street they went, the more distance she put between them until he gave up on giving her the choice, snagged her sleeve, and dragged her along beside him. “Would you keep up?” Her only response was to shuffle her feet and shrug her shoulder. “So, you were going to fill me in on your family and ‘the team’,” he said, almost but not-quite joking. 

Shea scoffed and he dropped his hand mid-finger-quote. “Trust me, you don’t want to know.” She heaved in a breath and barked out a dry, bitter sounding laugh. “Honestly? You’ll probably be just fine,” she muttered, not without a hint of... something... in her tone that made his stomach coil deep into the realms of nausea. “They’ve let guys a lot worse than you get away with a lot worse than– Oh, never mind. Who knows? Maybe you won’t be fine. It wouldn’t be unlike them.”

Gulping back his fear, he wiped his clammy palms on his jeans. “And you?”

“What about me?”

“What will happen to you? If we get caught?”

He barely noticed her inch closer to him but felt himself swell with a strange sense of pride nonetheless. Knowing for a fact that she could protect him better than he could protect her didn’t stop him from, well, feeling protective over her. And it was nice, he had to admit to himself, to have someone look to him for protection, even if he knew he couldn’t supply it. 

“I dunno.” She gave a half-hearted shrug, and stepped even closer to him, almost pressed against him, as they walked inside the shop. “I’ll get dragged back to Go City, probably get stuck under doubled high-security containment measures, and get some damsel in distress script to follow when asked about where I was.” 

“Containment measures?” he sputtered, then squeaked and promptly fell silent at her less than gentle stomp on his foot. Dropping his voice he muttered, “You could have just told me to be quiet, you know.”

“Can we just get the stupid fruit and go?” she whined, giving his sleeve a tug.

He nodded, doing his best to not let how nervous she was making him show on his face. From the way her fingers seemed locked around his sleeve, he suspected he wasn’t hiding it all that well. Either that or there was something else that had her clinging to him and glancing around suspiciously as they made their way to the produce section.

Five minutes felt like they dragged on for hours, especially when the cashier miscounted their change three times and had to start over each time. Though he’d pointedly not commented on Shea’s proximity it hadn’t helped that she was glued to him the whole time. She smelled good. Like the shampoo she’d bought the day before, rather than his shampoo which she hadn’t hesitated to tell him was weird. It was... nice, in a horribly distracting way that was all the more horrible for the fact that it shouldn’t have been distracting at all. 

She finally seemed to relax once they were halfway back to the apartment. Not heeding his warning to wait until they could get home to wash them, she snagged the carton of strawberries from his hands and snuck one out, momentarily staining her lips red in her hurry to take a bite. He realized as he watched her that peanut butter stickies didn’t count as dinner - which meant he also realized quite suddenly that he didn’t even get one of them, and his stomach was starting to growl in protest. How could he hope she’d take his insistence that she eat seriously if he couldn’t be bothered to remember just because he’d been distracted?

Sneaking a strawberry for himself earned him a mocking repeat of his warning not to eat any before they’d been washed, and his gentle shove to her shoulder finally got him that laugh he’d been needing to hear all day. He was glad, to say the least, that she seemed to be relaxing. And the less she glanced around like there was danger lurking on every corner, the more he found he could relax too. 

He finally let his guard down when she made to snag for his glasses - "Payback," she'd claimed, "for stealing a strawberry." With a laugh, he twisted out of her reach and danced backward away from her.

He really shouldn’t have let his guard down.

His back crashed into something solid and before he could flinch, let alone turn to see what he’d bumped into, he was roughly shoved forward. He stumbled into Shea who easily caught and steadied him before he could knock them both to the ground. The moment he was stable, he whirled around, pushing her behind him in alarm. 

He was fairly certain that the blond man standing before them, not much older than himself, didn’t have good intentions - especially considering the sneer on his face and the knife he held up between them. He wasn’t sure, however, whether Shea truly didn’t understand what the world was like outside of her strange little bubble, or if she was just impulsive. No matter what the reason, she was quick to duck under his arm as he stuttered out apologies. 

He squeaked and fell silent for the second time that evening as she angrily demanded, “What’s your problem, dude?”

Whatever the man said fell on deaf ears. All Drew could hear anymore was his own heartbeat. Whatever it was, it clearly bothered Shea. He saw her shoulders tense, and then shake up and down, almost as if she was laughing. For a brief moment, he was able to focus past the blood rushing through his head, just long enough to hear her response.

“I’m gonna give you one chance to back off,” she laughed, though there was no humor to it. She sounded genuinely threatening - nothing like any of the threats she’d thrown his way over the last several days… How many days was it anyway? Four? Even her threat to “kick his ass” the night they met had been nowhere near as grave as she sounded at that moment. 

The blond man clearly didn’t take her threat seriously. The next several seconds seemed to pass in slow-motion, and in the blink of an eye at the same time. 

Drew might have shouted something as the man lunged for Shea, the slender knife glistening dangerously under the light of a street lamp, but the carton of strawberries was shoved into his stomach with enough force to drive the wind out of him. Doubled over, trying to catch his breath, he watched Shea gracefully side-step away from the weapon, like a ballerina but scarier.

Her leg kicked out with such speed he didn’t see it happen until it was over. The man reeled back several steps, one hand shooting to his face. The blood dripping from his nose was enough to turn Drew’s stomach, and he would have turned away if it weren’t for Shea. Shell-shock was only one of the reasons he didn’t try and grab her to pull her away from the fight. The fact that she was evidently winning, which really shouldn’t have been surprising, was another good reason to stay still and see how things played out. 

With a sense of excitement that terrified him, he realized - as the man cursed and called Shea something foul - that she was… toying with him. She jumped back, firmly knocking Drew out of harm’s way as the blond wildly swung the knife at her. She ducked and dodged his sporadic attacks, goading the man into spinning in dizzying circles until he looked ready to fall over. 

With a laugh that was closer to a girly giggle than he’d heard from her before, she kicked out again, a blow to the blond’s stomach that had him keeling over. That really should have been the end of it. Hell! The first kick should have been the end of it. But Shea launched forward anyway, her fist swinging upward and connecting with his jaw with enough force to seemingly bend the man’s spine in the wrong direction before he finally collapsed to the ground, groaning and scrambling away. 

Drew was still frozen in place, the strawberries clutched dutifully to his chest, as he stared wide-eyed at Shea who bent down to scoop something off the ground. 

“Finders-keepers?” she asked, twirling the discarded dagger between her fingers as if she’d been training with knives for years. He really wouldn’t have been surprised if that were true. 

His brain all but shut down for a moment and without realizing what he was doing, he grabbed her by the shoulders and started hauling her back to the apartment. It was only once they reached their street that his mind snapped back into his body.

“What the hell, Shea?” he blurted, pushing her a step away from him. 

She had absolutely no right looking as… sweet, and innocent, and young as she did, blinking up at him nervously as if she hadn’t just gleefully beaten a man bloody. A man who seemed intent on stabbing her, but that did little to silence the buzzing thoughts running rampant through his mind, too loud and too fast to be heard clearly.

“You did hear the part where he threatened to kill you, right?” she asked, mumbling without looking up at him. “He started it,” she added and kicked a pebble, seemingly fascinated with the way it bounced into the middle of the street. 

Chapter Text

The vibrant streak of blood on the toe of her shoe turned his stomach, but Drew couldn’t bring himself to look at anything else as he stumbled along beside Shea who was very nearly carrying him after his knees had suddenly buckled underneath his weight. He’d vaguely heard her saying something about “shock” when she caught him before he could fall. Her grip still tight on his arm was the only thing that stopped him from curling into a ball in the middle of the stairwell. 

Her hands were warm. 

And she still smelled good. 

And, although he couldn’t make out what she was saying, her voice was nice to listen to. 

But he couldn’t stop staring at the streak of blood on her shoe. 

He’d never seen something so ruthless in his life. Or at least, he’d never seen someone do something so ruthless on his behalf. It wasn’t shock, he thought, that had his head spinning. At least, not about how effortlessly she’d won a fight against a man twice her size - one who was armed, at that. It was that when she’d turned to look at him - or rather not look at him - she’d looked more nervous about… him than she had about a man she accused of threatening to kill him. 

Somewhere in the back of his mind he couldn’t help but note that she hadn’t even broken out her glowing green fire to help her. That thought was beaten down by the realization that bile was rising in his throat. 

Choking it down he gasped out, “Your shoes,” just as Shea unlocked the door to their apartment. She hummed curiously in response and, nearly begging, he elaborated, “Off. Take them off,” hoping he wouldn’t upchuck what little food was in his stomach. 

Pulling out of her grasp, he stumbled over and collapsed on the couch while she kicked her shoes off at the door. He’d all but forgotten the strawberries clutched in his arms until she walked over and plucked them from him. A faint smile formed on his lips as he watched her eat one like she was sneaking candy before putting the rest of the carton into the fridge.

“Are you okay now?” she muttered, sitting curled into a ball on the chair beside him. It was obvious that she was still avoiding making eye contact with him even if she tried to look relaxed, fiddling with the sleeve of the borrowed hoodie. 

Nodding, he closed his eyes to focus on taking a deep breath before trying to speak again. If he wasn’t expecting to blurt out what he said next he could only begin to imagine how much more surprised she must have been. Still, at least his offhanded question, “Have you ever seen a robot fight?” finally got her to look at him.

“Sure,” she answered after a moment. “Um… this lady, Electronique, has sent robots after us a few times. Doesn’t work very well, but she keeps trying.”

Drew blinked. Then blinked again. Despite the fact that he knew he ought to be scared of making her mad, he threw his head back and let out a laugh upon realizing what she meant. 

“That’s not the kind of robot fight I’m talking about,” he told her when his worryingly manic (even to his own ears) laughter died down. “I mean a– a robot fight. It’s… sorta a competition. Teams build robots then, well, make them fight.”

“Oh,” she muttered, her cheeks flushing. His own face warmed up at the thought that when she blushed like that, with the hood of his sweatshirt still pulled up over her head, she turned so green that she looked a bit like a turtle hiding its head inside its shell. A cute… A turtle. Just a turtle. Turtles are not cute.“Then… no. I didn’t even know that was a thing.”

“Would you - only if you wanted, of course - but I um… Would you want to join my team? Well, it’s not my team. I mean, the team was my idea and all, but James and Bobby and Kashwin are all–”

“Drew?” Shea mercifully interrupted his ramblings, raising an eyebrow at him. He gulped as he fell silent, and hoped that his nod showed her he was listening. “Not that I’m… saying no but I don’t know the first thing about building robots.” 

  Grinning, he shook his head. “You wouldn’t have to worry about that. We’ll build the robot.” He felt his grin grow wider as he thought about how merciless she’d been fighting a real person - he was sure that a robot would get even less pity from her. “But I think you’d be the perfect person to operate it.”

“Why?” 

“Why?” Drew repeated, scoffing before he remembered that not everyone’s minds worked the same way his did. “Sorry,” he apologized, although she didn’t look particularly offended. “Well, it’s just that you… You didn’t flinch. And that was a real fight, Shea! We could use someone as… as cutthroat as you.” 

He was fairly certain cutthroat didn’t mean… actually cutting someone’s throat. Could robots have throats? He supposed they could. Humanoid ones at least. Although animals had throats too, so if they built a robot that looked like a dog or a… a lion or something then it could sort of have a throat, right? 

Shaking his head, he forced himself to focus on the actual conversation he was having. 

“Of course I didn’t flinch,” Shea was mumbling, as he turned his attention back to her. “Flinch and people die.” Her voice was high and mocking, he presumed in mimicry of some lesson that had been drilled into her during her time as a superhero. But there was a more serious undercurrent to it too, something angry and sad and a little scared. 

Looking at her just then, the thought he’d been trying to avoid infiltrated his mind and wouldn’t get out. It must be terrible to be her. She really was just… a scared little— well, she wasn’t a little kid at all, but she was just a scared teenager. Sure, he knew he’d been the one to get so startled during that awful movie she’d made him watch that he fell off the couch and that she was the one who’d found it more entertaining than anything else. He also knew that never in his life had he met someone who seemed so on edge. And how could he blame her? How could anyone blame her? 

“What was it like?” he blurted, letting the question stray from his thoughts before he could stop it. “To be a superhero, I mean? Were you ever scared?”

“No,” Shea scoffed and then started to fidget, shooting a frown in his direction. “I mean, I guess when I was little it was…” Her voice trailed off and she shook her head, then shrugged. “Training was always worse than the real thing. By the time we actually had to face down people who wanted to hurt us, it… didn’t seem all that bad.”

“What about your little brothers? Don’t they get scared?” 

Shea scoffed again, though any trace of amusement was gone from her voice. He watched as she curled up into a ball once more, resting her chin on her knees. Her eyes turned glassy as she stared absently ahead of her.

“Of course they don’t get scared,” she muttered. “They still think it’s a game. They’re barely even ten. They don’t know that they should be scared.” 

“I would be terrified,” he declared, only realizing the truth in the statement as he said it. “Even with your powers - don’t you ever think that someone will—”

“Drew,” she snapped, pointedly cutting him off. He blinked stupidly at her and immediately began to feel guilty for blabbering about a subject she clearly didn’t want to talk about. “If some horrible awful thing exists I promise you someone’s already tried to do it to us. There’s nothing anyone could throw at us that we haven’t already faced at least once.” Adding in a mutter that he wasn’t sure he was meant to hear, she all but spat, “Or I haven’t faced, at least.”

Although “shut up” went unspoken, it was clear enough that’s what she wanted him to do. He bit his tongue to stop from asking her more about what her life was like. 

“I guess I wouldn’t want to talk much about it either,” he relented apologetically. “After all, I’m sure you didn’t just run away on a whim, did you?”

From the way she frowned at the floor, he suspected that hadn’t been the best thing to say. Maybe she had run away on a whim, he didn’t know. He didn’t know much of anything about her, really.

“I should make dinner,” he announced for a change of subject. “Do you… want to help?” 

She shook her head and after spending a moment too long watching her in the hopes she might change her mind, he decided to just let her be, retreating into the safety of the kitchen to prepare the chili mac he’d planned. It wasn’t his most impressive recipe - to be honest, he wasn’t particularly fond of it -but he hoped she wouldn’t mind. Given that her eating habits seemed so far to consist of nibbling on fruit when she wasn’t forgetting to eat, he couldn’t see why she would. Besides, it was a little late in the evening to be cooking anything more time-inducing as it was. 

He had just about finished prepping the ingredients he would need - only digging through to the back of the cabinet for his last unopened box of macaroni noodles - when he heard her shuffle into the kitchen, though hearing her didn’t stop him from jumping when he turned to see her sitting on the counter. She still had yet to pull the hood off her head and he was increasingly tempted to push it down himself. 

“There’s this one guy,” Shea began, her voice quiet. “His name’s Magnus. Literally, Magnus Tism. And you’ll never guess - the guy’s obsessed with magnets. Well, sorta. He’s convinced he can control metal. Or, at least, he seems convinced. We all thought he could at first too, before we found out that he had some weird super-powerful magnets hidden in this ridiculous costume that he wears.”

She paused a moment, staring into space as he silently added his ground beef and onions into the skillet on the stove and began to stir. He almost said something to encourage her to keep speaking, but then she sighed and continued as if she’d never lost focus at all. 

“The first time we fought him was a month after we got out of– a month after we officially became heroes. You know what he wanted? What he demanded so he wouldn’t bring down every building in the city? He wanted metal so that he could use his superpowers to make a sculpture. He didn’t even want a lot. But we couldn’t just help him get some metal. Oh, no. We had to fight him and throw him in jail even though all he’d done by then was make empty threats.”

She brought her hands up, closer to her face then, and started lighting her hands and letting the flames die over and over, plasma bouncing between her fingertips like a ping-pong ball made of light. He couldn’t stop himself from staring at her borderline-hypnotic idle habit, even as he continued cooking.

“He didn’t even know we existed. He didn’t want to hurt us. He didn’t want to hurt anyone. And then Heath - Hego - punched him halfway down the street. After that, he decided he was going to kill all of us. We spent half an hour dodging cars that the two idiots were throwing at each other. But you know what the worst part about it was?”

Shea paused for a moment, long enough that he eventually realized she was genuinely looking for an answer, and he hummed questioningly in response. 

“All I could think the whole time was that at least cars were easier to see than knives. Easier to dodge, too. After dealing with that in training, having some mad-man with a magnet try and obliterate us didn’t seem that bad.” 

There was a part of him, a large enough part that it took more effort to keep it silent than it should have, that could only think that the story she’d told would make a fantastic comic book. If it weren’t for the fact that he’d seen her glow - and now seen her fight as well - he might have called her a liar and assumed she’d gotten it from one in the first place. He very nearly asked if there were comic books about her, but decided against doing so, remembering how upset she’d been that he knew something as basic as her hero name. It seemed best to let her tell him what she wanted when she wanted. Even if he was undeniably curious. 

He didn’t know how long he stood there in silence, trying to piece together some response. It wasn’t as if he had any experience with superheroes outside of reading about and watching their adventures. And until a few days ago, he’d thought they must all be entirely make-believe. 

“Huh,” he managed to utter when her foot - when had he lent her a pair of his socks? - pushed against his hip. “I um… Did he change his name or did it always sound like the word ‘magnetism’?” It wasn’t what he meant to say, not that he knew what he did mean to say. But it served to make her snort and push him back another step. 

“Far as we know, it is his real name,” she answered with an amused (or at least he hoped) roll of her eyes. 

There was another silence then, and finally, he confessed, “I’m sorry, I really don’t know what I should say.” 

“I don’t know what you should say either,” she said. He couldn’t tell if she was joking or not and he felt himself nervously staring at her until her eyebrows furrowed and she glanced away, making him realize what he was doing. 

“Sorry,” he mumbled, glancing away as well to turn his focus intently on starting to add in his other ingredients. 

After a long moment, Shea spoke again. “Do you… want any help?” She sounded unsure of the offer, even as she said it. 

“You?” Drew asked, immediately starting to tease her without thinking about it. “You actually want to help cook dinner?”

She turned to glare at him, and he grinned back at her, more amused than scared. “Forget I asked,” she grouched. The small smile fixed on her lips detracted from how annoyed her crossed arms made her look. “Get stirring or whatever, oh king of dorks.”

It was his turn to glare, though he didn’t think he did a much better job at looking annoyed than she did.“You could measure out two cups of the macaroni for me,” he suggested, realizing that, distracted by her story, he’d completely forgotten to do so himself. 

“After you tried to burn me alive yesterday?” Shea snorted. 

“Nngh! I did not try and– And your hands are fine, anyway!” 

“You also tried to shoot me last night.”

“It was a grape!” he protested, his ears warming at how whiny he sounded. “Pest,” he added, grumbling under his breath. Was it really only the night before that all that had happened? It seemed like ages had passed since then. His whole body felt heavy with exhaustion suddenly. 

“Uh-huh,” she agreed, and it took him a moment to recognize the sarcasm in her tone. Airly commanding, “Just cook,” she waved a perfectly healed hand in his general direction. 

“You know, you’re very demanding!” 

Her laughter shouldn’t have delighted him so much, and he tried to glance away before thoughts about how cute she was could infiltrate his mind. He was too late and, for a long moment, the only thought in his head was one loudly pointing out how wonderful she was - even though it was true that she was very demanding.

“Yeah,” she answered, sounding almost too cheerful. “I know!” Her voice was wonderful too… and Drew desperately wished he could make the voice in his head shut up. He sternly reminded himself that she was only sixteen, feeling as if he were mentally stomping on his own foot. He nearly missed her teasing, “Like you said - I’m a pest.”

Too busy fighting his own mind to give her mockery any proper response, he practically begged, “Would you at least get the cheese from the fridge?” as he took on the responsibility of measuring the pasta. He all but threw the macaroni into the skillet as if the force would work to drive the discomforting thoughts away.

Her sigh came tinged with all the drama that only a teenager could muster, which was perfect too, and he— He needed those thoughts to stop before he got so frustrated with himself that he burst into tears. Even though he was sure he would never do anything… inappropriate… with her, it was still unsettling to know that even the vaguest notions of attraction to a sixteen-year-old girl existed within him. 

“Fine,” she said, and he almost didn’t remember what he’d asked her to do until she opened the door to the fridge.

When she popped back onto the counter, bag of shredded cheese in hand, impulsivity got the better of him. It was just after she muttered, “Here ya go, Doc,” that the… frustration, or whatever it was he was feeling about her hiding her face inside the hood of his sweatshirt finally got to him. And without thinking, he reached over and pushed it off of her. 

“Would you quit hiding your face?” he all but demanded. “I can hardly hear you!” It wasn’t quite true but an excuse still felt needed. 

The moment her head jerked back ever so slightly he was sure that he’d messed up, but it still took him far longer than it should have to pull his hands away from her shoulders. Even as his hands slowly dropped back to his sides, he couldn’t look away from her eyes staring into his. They really were a startling shade of green. He was sure that he’d never seen such gorgeous and memorable eyes in his whole life. And though there was something nagging at the back of his mind, telling him he ought to look away now, he couldn’t respond to the thought. He only vaguely noticed the green-tinted blush on her face, or the warmth spreading across his.

The awkward clearing of her throat finally snapped him out of it. Her mocking question of, “What are ya planning to do, kiss me?” only heaped on an extra serving of embarrassment. Especially when he couldn’t resist glancing at her lips, something in him wondering what it might be like to kiss her. Would she taste like plasma? What would that even taste like? Would her lips burn his when they touched? Would— stop!

And as seemed to be his only skill, he made the humiliating situation even worse. Stumbling away from her and stammering out some sort of apology, he managed to smack the skillet straight off the stove. His only reflex was to yelp and jump away to avoid the food splattering - which he’d thought would be inevitable. Her reflexes were far superior to his and without even having to do anything more than lean down a bit, she managed to catch the skillet in her palm. Only a few bites of food spilled down the side.  

“Doesn’t that—?” His panicked question died on his lips and he gulped slightly at her glare. “Right,” he managed. “Never mind.” Of course, the heat wouldn’t hurt. Still, the sight sent an unpleasant warmth into his palms, as if he were the one whose flesh was touching hot metal. “It really doesn’t hurt at all?” he asked, failing to resist the urge to shake his hands as if to cool them off. Bits of chili mac went flying off the spatula he’d forgotten was still his hand as he did, and he flinched when some landed on Shea’s face. 

She flicked it off and shrugged. “Not really.” Her gaze met his as she set the skillet back on the stove and they were both quick to glance away. “It kinda tingles, but it doesn’t hurt.” She sounded almost as awkward as he was feeling. 

“What about when you– your plasma?” he asked - or tried to ask. Clearing his throat he tried again, managing, “Does your plasma feel the same way?”

As if the mere mention of her powers made them surface, she brought her hands up and started lighting her fingers one by one. From the corner of his eye, he saw her gaze flick to the flames and, despite himself, he stole the chance to watch her face, wishing however briefly that he could read her mind and know what she was thinking. 

It took a long moment for Shea to slowly reply, “No… It’s– it’s more like…” She paused, and he quickly looked away as she hopped back onto the counter. “You know how you get all bundled up before going out on a cold day,” she started again, “so you don’t feel cold, but you can see your breath so you feel like you should feel cold?”

In the silence Drew found himself looking up at her again. “I… I guess so,” he replied, already making a mental note to remember that description for the first cold morning so he could be sure he understood what she was trying to say. 

“It’s sorta like that,” she concluded, putting out the flames and wiping her palms over her knees as if wiping off any residual plasma. “Using my glow kind of makes me feel warm, but like I shouldn’t feel warm. It feels more… comfortable than anything. Nostalgic, almost? Which I know doesn’t make any sense, but that’s what it’s like.”

It did and didn’t make sense at the same time. He wished he could experience the feeling, if just for a moment. “Did it always feel like that?” he wondered aloud. 

The shrill ring of the timer he’d forgotten he’d set seemed to momentarily startle them both. Had he really been cooking long enough for it to go off? He wasn’t sure anymore. He gave the skillet an extra moment on the stove, feeling a need to make up for the brief moment it had been knocked off, then hastily reached over Shea’s head to grab bowls. Scooping a generous serving into each bowl, he refused to let himself worry about making it look fancy. 

He pushed one of the bowls into her hands just as a curt, “No,” left her lips - her only response to his question. 

All but flinching away from her harsh tone he raised an eyebrow. “I get the feeling I shouldn’t ask.”

She slipped off the counter and he took that as his cue to walk to the table. “I catch on fire, Drew,” she pointed out, trailing a step behind him. “I’m sure you can imagine what that felt like the first few months.”

He thought he could. He didn’t want to. The very idea made him cringe. “It must have hurt.” She hummed in agreement, taking a bite so large he almost snapped at her to take smaller bites. Biting (heh…) his tongue, he asked instead, “Why’d you keep… using it? If it felt like that?”

“I tried to stop it,” she said, sounding like she was confessing a secret. 

He pushed his food around his bowl with his spoon, embarrassment still making it difficult for him to look right at her. “Yeah?” he muttered when she didn’t elaborate. 

A dark look, angry and sad and a little scared - just like her voice had been earlier in the evening - passed over her face. He wanted to flinch away from it, and he wanted to make sure that whatever she was feeling to give her such an expression… he hoped she would never feel that way again. He knew protecting her from feelings was probably even more difficult than protecting a superhero in general but he still desperately wished he could. 

“You don’t have to talk about it,” he assured her and momentarily forced himself to look at her again. His eyes were immediately drawn back to her lips and he had to look away. 

Despite his assurance, she told him, “It was… right after we stopped being dead. It hurt to use my glow so… I decided to stop, and just pretended I couldn’t when someone asked me to. And, that worked fine for a week. Even had a few of the doctors convinced it had completely gone away.” She sounded proud of that. “Then I was allowed to stand up for the first time in nearly a month. I’d barely been able to walk across the room without help and… halfway back to the bed I combusted. I don’t really remember much except that I swear every cell in my body was on fire. I guess I burned the nurse that was helping me too, cause she never came back.”

A worryingly frightened look crossed her face and he scarcely heard her horrified murmur of, “Oh god…” 

“What?” he nervously asked, ignoring his feelings long enough to force himself to meet her petrified gaze as her eyes locked on his. 

“I think I killed her.”

Chapter Text

Drew couldn’t remember if the sun had already set before they’d sat down to eat, or if they’d been staring at each other for so long that it had gotten dark while they remained seemingly frozen in time. All he knew for sure was that - between the tick-tick-tock...ing of his watch and the thrumming of his heartbeat in his ears - the silence between them was too loud. There was an awkward clearing of a throat - his throat, maybe - and his eyes dropped away from her face to the hood of his sweatshirt still bunched up around her neck. 

He also knew it was his voice that yelped, “We should get a turtle!” although he didn’t feel his mouth move. Wrapping his fingers underneath the sides of his chair, he held on for dear life, sure that if there was ever a perfect moment for him to topple over and die of embarrassment, it would be that moment. To make matters worse, he continued to blabber, even as Shea shifted her blank stare to her bowl, forming a pit of dread inside his chest. “I– I like turtles. They’re adorable! And we’re… I’m… We can have—”

Shea’s dark mutter interrupted him. “She probably deserved it anyway.” She sounded like she might be sick. The scrape of her bowl against the table as she pushed it away from her was too loud too. “I’m not hungry, anymore.”

“I… I’ll save it for you,” he offered, the pit of dread burrowing down deeper inside of him, mingling with shame and guilt he didn’t want to acknowledge. 

What was wrong with him? What kind of so-called genius would blurt out something like ‘we should get a turtle’ after someone confessed to… to what? Accidental murder? Could it be murder at all, if she didn’t mean to do it? How did that—? And there he went again, having too many thoughts in his head to stop and consider how stupid they were! 

“Are you okay?” he asked, unsure if he should be asking. 

“I don’t know,” she murmured, pausing with her chair pushed halfway away from the table. He was glad, now, that she wasn’t looking at him. He wasn’t sure if he could handle it if she did. “They… they weren’t good people. But I don’t know if– does killing her make me worse than them? Even if I didn’t know… didn’t mean to do it?”

He shrugged, if just for something to do. “I don’t think it does. I don’t… I don’t know who these people are or what they did but… Even if they were good people you didn’t try to hurt anyone on purpose.”

“But I have hurt people on purpose!” she shouted at him, slamming her hands down on the table so hard he was almost - almost - distracted from the tears pooling up in her eyes. “I’m– I’m the reason why people who don’t deserve it are in jail! They needed help not… Not us. Not me!”

“Shea—”

“Just don’t,” she nearly begged, the momentary fight in her gone. 

Insistently, he tried again. “But it wasn’t your fault!”

“Really?” she scoffed incredulously. “It wasn’t my fault?”

“You didn’t know—”

“I knew that I didn’t need to hit that guy as hard as I did tonight,” she spat. “I knew that and I did it anyway. I knew that Magnus didn’t need us to fight him from day one, but I did it just because I was told to.” Scoffing again, a sound of disgust he could only assume was directed at herself. “And when I don’t hurt people…” 

Her voice trailed off and she fell silent for one sudden moment, right before launching out of her chair. The next thing Drew heard was the bathroom door slam shut.  

Staring between the two still-full bowls of chili mac, he went to war with himself, wondering if it was better to let her be or to follow her. He hadn’t actually made a decision when he felt his knuckles rap against the door. 

“Are you okay?” he asked, though he was even more sure it was a stupid question than the last time he tried to ask less than five minutes before. It took a moment before he heard her mumble a reply, pleading with him to go away. “Please, come out of there,” he begged in turn.

He waited, and waited, and waited. She didn’t respond to him. 

“For what it’s worth… I don’t think you’re a bad person, Shea,” he said, feeling strange talking to a door for the second time in one day. “I know we don’t really know each other very well, so what I think is unrelevant but I still think—”

“Irrelevant.”

Being interrupted never made him smile so much in his life. 

“What?” he asked, trying to stifle a laugh.

The door opened and she brushed past him, strands of hair clinging to her face the only indication he saw that she’d splashed water on her face. He wondered if that was just a normal way to calm down, or if it had something to do with her glow. Though she said she didn’t feel hot when she used her strange powers, he still wondered if… well, it was hot, so maybe cooling herself down helped to stop the flames from creeping into existence when she didn’t want them. Maybe that was why she ran from the table. 

“The word is irrelevant,” she reiterated, as she marched past him. Then she paused, frozen between the kitchen table and her room as if she couldn’t decide where to go. “And you’re wrong. A good person would regret killing someone. I don’t.”

“I think you’re lying.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I know that if you were a bad person it wouldn’t even occur to you to worry about being a bad person. I know that a good person recognizes when they went too far, even if going too far was out of their control. A bad person wouldn't care, or they would lie... Or make jokes," he added, bitter memories surfacing before he could shove them out of his mind. “A good person asks if doing something bad to a bad person makes them worse.”

Shaking her head, she stuffed her hands in her pockets. “I think you’re letting the hero label fool you.”

“I’m not.” At least, he didn’t think he was. She didn’t respond, but she didn’t budge either. “Fine!” he finally gave in, choking under the pressure of silence again. “You’re a bad person! Is that what you want me to say? Do you want me to say that– that you should go? That I’m scared and don’t want you—”

“You are scared, aren’t you?” she choked, and he stepped toward her as she wiped a hand across her face. Putting his hand on her shoulder was a mistake, he realized when she whirled around to face him. “You’re right,” she managed through tears she was obviously trying to suppress. “I should—”

“If you say you should go, I swear, Shea,” he snipped, finally his turn to interrupt. He took a breath, trying to calm the tumult of emotions… tumulting around inside of him. “At least just… eat your dinner. Sleep on it. I don’t want you to go. I was only…”

“I know what you were doing. It doesn’t change the fact that you’re right. It’s selfish of me to be here.”

“Well, it– it would be more selfish of you to leave now!”

She raised an eyebrow suspiciously at him. “How?”

“Um… Be-because I made dinner? And… and you haven’t checked my work enough to pay back the clothes I bought? So… you owe it to me to stay because we made a deal?”

He knew he’d won the argument when her face flushed. Maybe he should have joined the debate team, back in high school. 

“I’m still not hungry,” she grumbled. “But… fine. I won’t leave. Yet.” She didn’t sound quite so sincere in her threats anymore. And her claim to not be hungry didn’t sound so sincere anymore when her stomach growled. She didn’t fight him when he slipped past her to snatch up and shove her abandoned bowl back into her hands.

“Eat,” he commanded, and with a roll of her eyes, she popped the spoon into her mouth. A low chuckle escaped him as she turned away from him as if that would keep him from noticing her shovel in an even bigger bite. He sat back down in his seat, gesturing for her to do the same and slowly she drifted over and sat back down.

They finished their dinners in silence, at least until Shea murmured, “Are you afraid of me?”

He glanced up and immediately regretted it. Her stare caught his, freezing him in place like a terrified Medusa. It was Medusa, right? That turned people to stone? 

“No,” he answered, maybe a little too quickly. “Well…”

“I knew it.” She sounded disappointed, in a way. Unsurprised. But disappointed. 

“I’m not scared of you.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“It means– I don’t know. I’m not scared of you but… I don’t want you to have to go back,” he confessed. “Not if it means going back to… Sorry, I don’t want to call your parents horrible or anything but…” He shrugged, trying to break some of the tension coiling up in his muscles. 

She nibbled her bottom lip, scraping her spoon against her empty bowl. “They never used to be. Before, I mean. After the comet and all this,” she emphasized her words with a brief display of flames, “they didn’t think we were the same people anymore. Or people at all.”

“I’m scared of you having to go back to that. It can’t be… good for you.”

“Oh,” was all she could seem to muster. 

Nodding, Drew stood. “I have work to do,” he announced, hoping she wouldn’t assume he was just trying to get out of the awkward conversation. Not that that wasn’t part of it.  She barely acknowledged him with a nod of her own, though she cleared both bowls before he could bother to ask, which he took as permission to retreat into the living room.

He did sit down on the couch with the intention of starting on the work his professors had assigned, at least. 

When he woke up, not remembering having fallen asleep, the room was almost completely dark, save for the blue-ish glow of the television. Blearily, he propped himself up on one arm, tugging the blanket that he was certain he’d thrown over the chair, up with him. And he was even more certain that he hadn’t turned Mighty Martian on or put his glasses on the coffee table. Let alone taken them off in the first place. 

He blinked and glanced around as if the room itself could answer the questions his brain was too sleepy and muddled to ask. It was when he spied the blurry image of Shea at the kitchen table, her cheek pressed sleepily against one hand, reading a book splayed out on the table by the glow of the other, that he started to piece together what must have happened. At least some of it. 

He ducked back down before she could spot him, realizing he probably shouldn’t try to get attention to ask why Mighty Martian was on until he could get the dumb smile off his face. Which would take as long as it would take for him to get the thought of how cute she looked, even as little more than an indistinct blob, out of his head. Bringing the blanket up to his face and thinking about how sweet it was of her to put it over him - for the second night in a row, no less - did not help the matter. Bad person, his ass. There was no way she was a bad person, no matter what she said. 

He realized that his thoughts were having the opposite effect, only cementing the dumb smile on his face. Trying to distract himself with the thought that her hand looked like a lava lamp brought a different kind of smile to his face. It was still too dumb for him to be willing to disturb her, but at least the heat coiling low in his abdomen started to disperse.

“I know you’re awake, you know,” she said, and he almost fell right off the couch, she startled him so badly, despite how soft her voice was. He was glad he didn’t. Doing that once had been embarrassing enough. He pulled the blanket tighter around himself, debating whether or not he should sit up and confirm for her that he was awake. Her quiet laugh brought all the awful thoughts right back to his addled brain and even before she giggled, “Fine then, I guess you’re not,” he’d already decided there was no way he could sit up and risk looking at her again.

“Why’s the TV on?” he croaked, glad to think she couldn’t guess his thoughts from his voice. 

He didn’t hear her get up, and the yelp that escaped him when she sat down on the chair was far more embarrassing than falling off the couch would have been. Maybe. He snatched up his glasses, jamming them onto his face as if to hide behind them.

Unphased, she announced, “You were having a nightmare.”

“I was?” 

“Well, you sure were crying a lot for someone who wasn’t having a nightmare. The screaming was a pretty big hint too.” Was she joking? He was too tired to be sure of anything except the fact that being so tired around her was probably not the best idea. Especially not when his gaze settled on her lips. He probably shouldn’t have put his glasses back on. 

Maybe, “I’m sorry,” wasn’t a normal response to someone mentioning you were screaming in your sleep, but it sure was the only thing he could think to say. He just hoped he wasn’t talking. There were plenty of conversations he wasn’t sure he was ready to have yet. Certainly not without plenty of alcohol. “But um… why’s the TV on?” he asked again. 

“Well,” Shea began, shifting almost uncomfortably. “I tried to wake you up when you started crying, but as soon as I touched you, you started screaming. My brother still falls asleep to reruns of his favorite dumb kids’ show when he has nightmares, so I thought maybe it would help.” He didn’t miss her added mutter of, “At least he said he did in an interview once,” though he figured it was best left unaddressed. 

“Did it?”

“What?”

“Did it help?”

“Oh. Yeah, seemed to. You stopped crying, at least.”

He wasn’t sure if he was just tired or if her speech was a little slurred. Given the way his, “Well, thank you then, I guess,” sounded a little slurred too, he figured it was just him. Either that or she was just as tired as him. 

How blank his mind went when he turned his focus to the nostalgic cartoon, the way his body started to get that floaty half-asleep feeling to it, should have been all the warning he needed to just let himself fall asleep. Instead, he had to be a moron and let the desire to stay up and talk to her beat out common sense. 

“What were you reading?” he asked, between yawns. 

“Nothing,” she blurted so quickly he couldn’t help but glance at her. She blinked, green glowing blush creeping onto her cheeks. He didn’t want to think about what she might be reading that would cause such a reaction. Not that he could help it. She quickly turned away from him, throwing her legs over the arm of the chair. He wasn’t convinced she was actually watching the show, despite how intently she stared at the screen.

“You took my glasses off,” was the last… okay thing he said. 

“I didn’t, actually,” she corrected. “You threw them at me. Woulda busted my lip if you actually had any strength behind it.” She glanced back at him as she spoke, and unsurprisingly his gaze settled on her lips. Again.

His stupid brain. Why couldn’t it just let things go sometimes? And why did he have to be stupid enough to stay awake even when he could practically feel his social intelligence turning off? 

Forget saying something stupid about turtles. If he could have up and died over anything he said it would have been just then when he blurted out a question that had been playing on his mind earlier. “Would it hurt to kiss you?”

“What?”

“Earlier you said—” He didn’t even notice that his speech was garbled by another yawn. “And I just wondered if kissing you would burn cause of your glow. Or would it taste like plasma?” At least he saved himself just a bit by chuckling, “For scientific purposes.”

“You want me… to kiss you?” Shea asked slowly, turning to sit up in the chair, leaning his direction. 

He had the presence of mind to blush and lie, “Just… curious.” 

He didn’t, however, have the presence of mind to realize that it still sounded like he was asking her to kiss him. Maybe if he’d been looking at her he would have realized it.

At least she didn’t hit him. 

Not that the fact that she stooped toward him, catching him completely by surprise, and pressed her lips to his with one hand fluttering on his cheek, was much better for him. It was like an electric shock coursed through his entire body, and he hated that he couldn’t just blame nerves for the heat pooling in his stomach. But the shock didn’t come from her lips - not in the sense of burning him, at least. 

The kiss didn’t last very long, whether she pulled away or he pushed her he wasn’t entirely sure. In the brief second their lips were connected he did notice that she tasted good. Good in a particularly familiar way. A caramel apple way. 

He really shouldn’t have been surprised that she’d gotten into the last of the alcohol. Still, “Have you been drinking?” left his lips, though he knew the answer already. 

“No.” She paused. “Maybe.”

“That’s… that’s okay. Just um… You shouldn’t do… that again,” he stammered, gesturing vaguely between them.

Her face glowed. 

“Right. Sorry. Um… I think maybe I should go to bed,” she practically squeaked, and before he knew it, she was gone, her door clicking quietly shut behind him. He hoped she wouldn’t hate him in the morning. And he hoped that, eventually, his lips would stop tingling. 

No matter how hard he tried to focus on the episode of Mighty Martian playing quietly on the TV, or how many different ways he tried to list the elements of the periodic table, his mind kept going back to the feeling of her lips on his. And the thought that he would give anything for her to do that again. 

Every muscle in his body felt tense and agitated and– and that was his first kiss, he realized. The most beautiful human being he had ever laid his eyes on just kissed him. And he pushed her away. He told her not to do it again. He knew it was the right thing to do - it was what he’d always been taught anyway. That didn’t exactly stop him from regretting it. 

He all but threw his glasses away from him and grabbed for the remote she’d generously left within his reach. Going back to sleep was just about the only thing he could think would get the thoughts off his mind. At least, he hoped.

He debated getting up and retreating to his own room. The comfort of the couch, with his warmest blanket already wrapped around him, and the knowledge that if he stood up at all he’d head straight for what little alcohol he hadn’t already used for his caramel apple specialty - which surely would not help the way he was feeling - kept him from budging. 

Ignoring the way his pants felt tighter than usual was easier said - well, thought, in this case - than done. Suddenly he was far more glad than he had any right to be that she was the only one with any alcohol in her bloodstream at the moment. He was starting to doubt the likelihood that he would have been able to push her away if he’d been drunk on top of being exhausted. At least not before he tried to take a stupid little curiosity-satisfying kiss too far. 

As it was he was still looking too deeply into it. Wasn’t he? She– She didn’t actually want to kiss him, had she? 

Groaning he pulled the blanket over his head. While he was wondering if his stupid inability to just shut up had just ruined any chance at a decent friendship, he managed to fall back to sleep. 

He didn’t know how much later it was that he woke up again. The light had been turned on and Shea was standing over him, a glass of water in her hand, shaking his shoulder as she quietly called his name. 

“Drew,” she repeated. “Wake up.” When he blinked at her, latching onto the blanket, she explained, “You were having a nightmare again.”

He most certainly had not been having a nightmare. 

“Right, thanks,” he squeaked, more appreciative than ever of the fact that she’d dropped the blanket on top of him. 

“Are you alright?” she asked him.

He most certainly was not alright. He nodded anyway. He just hoped she would walk away soon, an all too familiar chill in the front of his pants sending heat flooding his face, almost bringing tears to his eyes with how humiliated he was. Even if she didn’t know. Dear God, he hoped she didn’t know. 

Evidently, sleeping didn’t do jack to take his mind off of her. 

And, evidently, she was more inclined to watch him with a concerned look crossing her face than she was to walk away. He managed some awkward stammering - a vague “goodnight” mixed in somewhere - before he wrapped the blanket as tightly around himself as he could and all but bolted into his room, locking the door behind him. 

He couldn’t strip his shame-soaked clothing off of himself any faster. And he certainly didn’t dare risk sneaking back out to try and wash the mess off. 

The only other time he’d cried after a wet dream had been when he’d had his first and had assumed he’d started wetting the bed - one of the only childhood failings that he’d never faced before. A very different type of tears slipped down his cheeks as he cleaned himself off the best he could with spare tissue, collapsing onto his bed after pulling a new pair of boxers on, out of habit. 

He’d been sure it was just a stupid little crush. At most. He thought she was cute, not someone he would ever have any real sexual desire towards. Conscious or otherwise. 

Maybe… Maybe if he couldn’t get himself under control she really would be better off finding somewhere else to live.

Chapter Text

He supposed that there was one benefit to not being able to fall asleep, which was that forgetting to set his alarm wasn’t really a problem. Also, the sunrise really was quite beautiful. Not quite as beautiful as the young woman sharing his apartment - which was precisely the kind of thought he was meant to be avoiding! - but still nice enough to look at as he watered the plants on his fire escape from a stray bottle he’d found under his bed. 

The discomfort of dried fluid still present on his body made itself known once again as he watched pink clouds float across the sky. How did the saying go again? Something about sailors and red skies? He hoped the pink clouds meant something good, although he supposed the little rhyme had more to do with weather than luck. Nonetheless, he ducked back in his room, tossing the water bottle that he’d hardly noticed he’d crumpled across his room where it dropped to the floor with almost no sound at all. 

His need for a shower and his desperate desire to not accidentally run into Shea after the events of the previous night created a pool of fiery anxiety in his belly as he stared down his bedroom door. Even the lavender scent of the fresh towel he’d forgotten to put in the linen closet did nothing to calm him. 

Swallowing his fear, along with the bile rising in his throat, Drew finally risked letting the door swing open. When he didn’t immediately see Shea standing outside waiting to confront him he practically threw himself into the hall and made a mad dash for the bathroom across the hall. Which really was only just a few steps, so there was no excuse for him to be panting as hard as he was, he berated himself. Although it was likely more due to increased nerves than it was due to actual physical exercise. After a moment his breathing evened out enough for him to decide he wasn’t having an asthma attack. Good. It would be the first in years. He wasn’t sure he could handle that. 

Throughout his entire shower, he was torn between being glad that the running water was taking away some of the lasting physical evidence of his body’s late-night betrayal and listening for any sign that he’d woken Shea. By the time he made to get out, he realized he’d been so distracted that he couldn’t remember what aspects of a normal shower routine he’d completed and which he hadn’t. Trying not to let frustration bring tears to his eyes he stepped back under the spray and cleaned himself for a second time - or maybe a first if he really had just stood there for several minutes as he feared he had.

Clean and dressed he found he felt better than he had at any point in his tossing and turning throughout the night. That did not, in any way, shape, or form, mean that he was prepared to deal with the possibility that Shea would be awake. Attempting to prepare himself for inevitable disaster in the humidity of the fogged-up bathroom, Drew brushed his hair back for the third time. Immediately upon swinging the door open he gave into cowardice and started to rush back to his bedroom.

Glasses, he remembered quite suddenly, worked better when he actually put them on his face. Running head-first into the doorframe was always a good reminder of that. Sheepishly he shuffled the rest of the way into his room, pulling his glasses from where they hung on his shirt, and tried to ignore his now throbbing head.

He could only stall for so long. Soon enough he was ready to go... if he ignored the fact that he had to grab his textbook and notebook that he’d left on the coffee table the night before. He knew he would finally have to face the possibility of running into Shea. 

Sure enough, she wasn’t in her room. That she was asleep at the table brought only the slightest relief, which vanished the moment he realized he must have misremembered where he’d left his textbook because it was not on the coffee table as he’d thought, but rather under Shea’s sleeping head. 

Tip-toeing closer he weighed the risks of trying to pry the book out from under her. His notebook, at least, looked easy enough to grab. So, naturally, she had to stir the moment he did. Panic, as always, took over and he scrambled out the door, abandoning his textbook on the table, along with any hope of eating breakfast. 

He wanted to believe he’d only imagined a quiet voice calling his name as he fled. Needed to believe it, or he’d swear his heart would break thinking about the fact that he’d decided overnight that she would be best finding somewhere else to go. Somewhere where he wasn’t. 

The pink clouds were not a good sign he concluded halfway to the bus stop when the first raindrop splattered on his glasses only moments after deceptively blue skies grew dark. He made the mistake of pausing to look up and was met with a brief moment of calm before a smattering of rain began to pour down over him. Throwing his bag over his head with a groan he failed to stifle, Drew hurried the rest of the way to the stop. A futile effort - every spot on the bench was full, and he was left standing in the torrent of water without so much as a coat to keep himself dry. 

Soaked to the bone and colder than he would have expected for early September, Shea was the last thing that should have been on his mind. And yet he stood there shivering, wondering only if she was okay. Fearless as she seemed, he was sure she had to be afraid of something and as thunder cracked overhead he considered that she might be afraid of storms.

If the bus arrived even a moment after it did he might have turned around and ran back to check on her. Perhaps in an evidently rare stroke of luck, the bus arrived when it did, and the thought to go check on her as if that would resolve him of any of the guilt and awkwardness he felt occurred to him only after the driver peeled away from the curb. 

The realization that he hadn’t completed his homework finally pulled his mind away from his resident runaway pest.   The respite was brief. Flipping open his notebook he was glad enough to discover that he’d closed his sheet of homework inside when he’d grabbed it earlier. Dread started to settle in as he realized he needed his textbook to complete it. His textbook, which was presently under the head of the most interesting, stunning, and mind-invading woman he’d ever met. 

No . Not a woman. She wasn’t. She was sixteen and he was twenty-one and he was the one who needed to back off. Even if he wanted nothing more than to spend his time with her, and get to know her even better. He would be better off trying not to get to know her well at all. Everything she said and did, even her pronouncement - announcement? - that she might have killed someone made his heart ache for her in more ways than one and—

His heart did not ache. This was a crush . Childish, immature, and stupid. And he was done. He had to be. 

She liked to make things difficulter… no that wasn’t right… more difficult for him.

Beside his sheet of homework, scribbled inside his notebook in Shea’s perfect handwriting, were the answers. Complete with the page in the textbook she had found the answers on. That must have been the book she was reading when he’d woken up the first time. It explained why she seemed too embarrassed to tell him what she was reading. 

His heart swelled for a moment, overwhelmed by how sweet a gesture it was. The amount of time and care she must have put into doing the work for him was… was… well, overwhelming. As fast as the sight of what she’d done made him feel as… - happy? loved? - good as it did, they crashed just as fast, and he was sent spiraling. 

Why would she do his homework? Hadn’t he said the night before that she shouldn’t leave because she hadn’t helped him enough? Was that why she did this? Would she be gone before he got back? He didn’t want her to go before he could say goodbye. He didn’t want her to go at all. Not even with his… uncomfortable feelings - emotional and otherwise. Whether or not she was right before and her leaving would be better he didn’t care. He didn’t want her to go.

Fighting back tears - he really was as much of a crybaby as she’d teased him for being - he filled out his homework sheet with the answers she’d left for him. Maybe she did it to prove to herself that she was a good person. She’d been upset about that the night before. Hadn’t she? It was just the night before?

The few days that had passed since she followed him home like a stray puppy had been a whirlwind of chaos - the likes of which he was never fond of. He hated losing track of time like that. Had there really been nothing more than a measly matter of hours between her insistence that she was a bad person and when she… she kissed him?

She kissed him.

And he pushed her away. 

Well, not physically but he told her she shouldn’t have done something he’d all but directly asked her to do. If only he could wrap his mind around why she did it - it wasn’t as if he’d tried to convince her, or even himself, that she wouldn’t be able to kick his a— butt… if she wanted to.

She was drunk, he reminded himself. Er… drinking. She couldn’t get drunk, she’d said. Or she couldn’t get hungover? She’d been drunk, he was sure, that night. That night which had also been such chaos that he wasn’t sure anymore which night it had been. Two nights ago? Three? What did it matter how much time had passed, anyway? She was only going to leave if she wasn’t gone already.

But, then again, he argued, maybe she wasn’t. Maybe she liked him too, although not likely in the same way he found himself drawn to her. The same reason, he remembered with a jolt of frustration that made him want to scream, that he had decided to help her find somewhere else to go after fighting himself all night. 

As lost in thought as he was, he didn’t notice the bus pulling up to his stop until the driver began to peel away from the curb. A panicked, “Wait!” bubbled out of him as he shot out of his seat, and promptly fell over when the driver slammed on the brakes. Scrambling back to his feet amidst the barely concealed laughter of people in the surrounding seats, Drew ran to the front of the bus, practically leaping out of the open door with a quick apology to the driver, who only growled something unkind in return.

The rain hit his skin like shards of ice. For a moment he paused, stunned into a blissful and rare mental silence as his brain practically reset, the rain a cold but appreciated reminder that the world still existed outside of the jumbled frenzy of his back and forth thoughts. 

In a daze, he barely thought to hitch his backpack over his head as he began his trek to class. His… multitude of predicaments regarding Shea didn’t entirely leave his mind, but he supposed his stomach had settled by the time he arrived. Without much thought behind it, he shook a hand through his hair, sending droplets of water flying through the air as he stepped into the room.

He heard a disgusted scoff behind him right before a girl he faintly recognized from various classes throughout the years knocked her shoulder against his in a manner he was sure was deliberately not nice. “Are you a dog?” she spat, loud enough to draw the attention of almost the whole small class. 

He could feel his face heating up as, for the second time in a matter of minutes, people started laughing at his expense. He scurried to the back of the room and ducked into a desk in the corner, as far from the mocking as possible. 

In high school, between the crack in his glasses, courtesy of one trip into the garbage can or another, and his generally being the shortest in the class, he’d always had to sit in the front row of every class. Back then it was a haven for him. Sure, people threw things at his head often enough, and certainly, on more than one occasion, someone had stuck gum in his hair, but he was safe from any real physical harm with a teacher so close by. The moment he arrived at MIST, however, he’d realized the situation was quite different. Students typically fought tooth and nail for a seat in the front row, which meant the back was the safest place to be if he wanted to avoid being humiliated. 

But it was lonely. 

High school had been lonely as well, of course, but this was worse. He wasn’t quite certain he wanted to know what was so wrong with him that he found himself an outcast amongst outcasts. He had his friends and all, but he so rarely had classes with any of them since they’d moved onto the more subject-specific classes of grad school. He tried not to let it hurt that they’d all gone for some form of astro-science, and still had classes together most days of the week. 

What did hurt, no matter how hard he tried not to let it, was that they all had friends outside of their little group. They didn’t rely on his friendship nearly as much as he relied on theirs. It wasn’t that he didn’t want them to have friends and be happy but— but he was jealous!

He hated being jealous more than most things in the world because all throughout his life there had been someone to be jealous of. Children in his kindergarten class who could find their words in word searches while he was struggling to make the squiggly letters stay put on his page long enough to have the chance, kids who didn’t have a dumb dyslexic brain like his that was never going to read right, anyone who didn’t have a dead dad and a—

No! Don’t think about that. 

He slammed too hard on a computer key, in his desperation to stop his thoughts from spiraling any further than they already had. He watched the letter P fall to the ground and bounce three times before sliding under a shelf and out of sight. 

Drew heard a voice in his head calling him a freak, even before someone in class actually did. He wanted to bolt out of the class, but instead, he shrank in on himself, hastily returning to typing with excess gentleness. If how lucky he was to be attending college at all wasn’t so important to him, he may actually have run home.

The clicky-clack of typing around him resumed, and as he typed strings of letters he could only hope were correct without quadruple checking them, his brain slipped away from reality again. If he could just go home, he would change out of his damp clothes and into his warmest pajamas, heat up a can of soup - not as good as his recipes, but nostalgic enough to be pleasant - and relax on the couch. One of his favorite childhood movies would be playing, and even though Shea would tease him about the choice, she’d surely watch with him, curled up under the blanket with her head on his—

No, no, no! She could not become part of his stupid rainy-day fantasies! Not like that. Not like anything. He shouldn’t be fantasizing about cuddling on the couch together, or having dreams about her moaning his name as their bodies joined into one, or wishing he’d slipped his tongue between her lips and stolen a taste of her while he had the chance, or… 

Focusing on reminding himself what he wasn’t supposed to be focusing on made it impossible to focus on anything else. Maybe if he knew just what it was about her that made it so hard for him to get his mind off of her, he would be able to find a cure for his lovesick heart. He just hoped he didn’t discover he was actually just a pervert, attracted to her because of her age. He wasn’t sure he could live with that. 

But really, he wondered, what was it about her? It wasn’t as if she was particularly nice to him. Well, she was nice, he had to admit. She teased him, but at the end of the day… She had stayed with him all night after they watched that awful movie together, making him feel safer than he was willing to have her know. She tried to help him through his nightmares, offered to check his work without even making fun of his dyslexia a little, and had felt so warm when she’d fallen asleep against him that he’d almost let temptation goad him into easing them both down and falling asleep. Not to mention, of course, that when he was supposedly threatened… she hadn’t hesitated to protect him. And she’d kissed him.

He could still feel her lips on his, electrifying every atom in his body into a strange, energized state of excitement and horror. The back row, lonely as it may be, was also good for hiding embarrassing erections. 

Glaring at the computer screen - which he was increasingly tempted to slam his head against - he couldn’t help counting how many times she had brought about such a reaction from him. Well, it wasn’t her fault, per se, but… He didn’t want to think of how many times he’d popped a boner or whatever at the sight or thought of a sixteen-year-old in the span of five days. 

Maybe it had something to do with those superpowers of hers! He hadn’t gotten one until she’d sauntered over to him and lit her hands on fire in a dazzling light show the likes of which he’d never seen before. By the time she’d put her hand on his chest the very next day, in the middle of mocking him about sex, of all things, he’d gotten so many that he couldn’t fight natural instinct any longer, and had had to lock himself in his room and… take care of the problem. Another two days of trying to ignore his body’s disgusting reaction to her presence and, evidently, his body had elected to take care of things itself while he slept. 

Boundaries. Boundaries had definitely been crossed. As the adult, it was his fault for not setting ground rules in the first place to prevent such feelings from emerging. Not that he’d ever had to worry about that before. 

Reluctantly he admitted to himself that he was going to have to talk to her about establishing proper boundaries if she wanted to stay as much as he wanted her to. Ideally, he could find a way to bring up the subject without accidentally revealing the fact that, not only did he find himself with a crush, but also that he was also physically attracted to her to an uncomfortable degree. 

He hardly even recognized that he’d left his programming class when everyone else did, too distracted by making a list of the rules he would have to suggest when they spoke. No more sitting so close together on the couch that they could easily fall asleep against each other. It was big enough for three, so there was no justifiable reason for it anyway! No more talking about subjects that were inappropriate for someone her age - more specifically no more talking about sex. And under absolutely no circumstance was he going to let her drink again. Well, she could drink water and such. He wasn’t going to mistreat her for something that was his fault. Alcohol, he mentally amended. She shouldn’t be drinking alcohol.  

His resolve to man up and actually have a talk with her about things - including that she shouldn’t be kissing him because she was so much younger than him, and apologize for making her think she had to - lasted all through his robotic engineering class and the entire bus ride back to the stop closest to his apartment. 

And finally, he broke.

The fear of facing her - or worse, getting back to discover she’d already fled - overwhelmed him and he lost conscious control of his muscles. He found himself turning on his heel and walking in the opposite direction. 

The library wasn’t a place he usually preferred to go on his own, books weren’t really something he enjoyed all things considered, but that’s where he wound up. Climbing the stairs he considered that if he picked out a movie and forced himself to go back right away then… then maybe he wasn’t hiding from her like a coward.

A wave of instant regret hit him the moment he opened the door. Did she ever go home? Drew wondered as he spied Paige Fisley working the desk. Again. 

Shea had teased him about being oblivious to her flirting with him, but that wasn’t quite the truth. And her attempt to use him hadn’t been as simple as mere flirtations.

He tried to slip around the corner before she could spot him, but he was too slow and she squealed his name so loud that several people shushed. Don’t shush the shusher! At least that stray thought made him snicker, even if turning to face her made every part of him feel queasy. He could imagine Shea rolling her eyes and telling him to just ignore her if he really disliked her that much, but she wasn’t capable of being nearly as loud as the imaginary voice of his mother, reminding him how impolite it is to ignore someone - especially a lady. 

He forced himself to offer a small wave. That was precisely the wrong thing to do. It prompted her to step out from behind the desk and damn near skip over to him.
“What can I do you for, Drew-doll?” she asked, linking her arm through his before he could stop her. 

If only he could force his attraction for Shea onto Paige, he thought, things would be okay. Then Shea could stay, and he wouldn’t have to have a terrifying conversation with her about already uncomfortable subjects, because the problem of his attraction to her would be gone. And maybe the memory of the night he’d finally realized why Paige had seemed so excessively nice wouldn’t make his tummy turn anymore. 

As it was, the memory overwhelmed him at her touch, clogging his throat and making his vision go funny. Or was the phrase “vision go fuzzy”? He wasn’t sure and at the moment he didn’t have the mental capacity to consider the difference. 

He’d been thrilled to work on a project with her when the assignment was first given. She always sat next to him, whispering to him during class. While the distraction wasn’t always appreciated, it was nice to not be completely alone in at least one of his classes. During the late nights they spent in the lab and typing at respective computers her usual niceness got dialed up too far for him to like anymore, but he couldn’t quite place why. All of a sudden she seemed inclined to touch him whenever possible, attempting to massage his shoulders until he shrugged out of her touch, or twirling his hair between her fingers, her face unnecessarily close to his while they went over coding plans together. 

He was too oblivious to what was happening to have realized he shouldn’t invite her back to his dorm, but it had been late and the project had been due in a mere matter of hours. More stupidly, he had informed her that his roommate was out so they wouldn’t have a problem working through the night.

Paige Fisley did not have the intention of working through the night.
An hour after they’d gotten to his dorm, and half an hour after Drew had given up trying to keep her from sitting pressed against his side despite how many times he’d shuffled away or reminded her she could sit on Bobby’s bed, she’d brought up her twin brother, Darren. Darren Fisley, who was at the very bottom of Drew’s class for lack of effort alone. He’d apologized to her, but confessed he could do nothing about his grade, even if they were there on a joint scholarship.

And that was his biggest mistake of the night, not that he knew it for another few hours. She brought him up again a few times, but he refused to do anything more than answer her the same way. 

It was at about three in the morning that she finally stood off his bed, and he sighed, relieved at the removal of the ever-present feeling of her body so close to his. 

“Are you sure there’s nothing I can do to change your mind, Drew-doll?” she’d asked. Before he knew what was happening the part he’d been working on was ripped out of his hands, and her hands were… somewhere he most definitely wished they weren’t. 

He sputtered and stuttered and couldn’t make himself tell her to stop, even as her rubbing her hand over him through his jeans made him so uncomfortable he wanted to cry. When she leaned in with her lips puckered, she slipped her hands inside his pants, and finally, he gathered enough sense to push her away from him. She shouted at him, all kinds of horrible sounding names he’d never heard before, and stormed out. He’d locked the door behind her, pushing a chair under the handle for good measure. 

In class the next morning, she’d acted completely back to the way she was normally, which made him feel all the more unsettled. He didn’t sleep well until after his request to transfer to the Tuesday/Thursday class was approved.

“Well, Drew-Drew?” Paige asked lightly, pulling on his arm and graciously enough, out of the memory of her touching him somewhere a little lower. “Looking for something special?”

“No,” he choked out and jerked his arm from her grip. “I was just going to pick up a movie for Shea,” he lied, noticing the way her eyes narrowed as he mentioned his runaway pest of a roommate, “but actually I think I already have it, so I’ll be leaving now.”

His mother would kill him for not saying goodbye, but Mother wasn’t there and he no longer cared about being polite to Paige. 

Racing back out the door, he hated himself just a little bit more. If Shea were to do what Paige had… he would probably beg her to keep going. Why couldn’t he want Paige? She was a few years older than himself, and she certainly wasn’t ugly, and he’d been quite fond of her collection of science pins. And maybe she really was attracted to him! So why did he have to find her touch so revolting? 

Stronger than he had all day, he suddenly wanted nothing more than to just… be with Shea. And, he realized with an undue amount of pride, he wasn’t even thinking that in a creepy way. He just wanted to get home, and do his work, and have her sit with him reading her book, and simply exist in the same space as her for a little while. And, he reminded himself, slowing his rushed pace back to his apartment, eventually have a chat with her.

It was a little less than halfway back that he spied an all too familiar Mighty Martian t-shirt on an all too familiar runaway superhero with an insane monetary reward promised to anyone who helps force her back to her old life. He’d spent half the day worrying that she might have run off before he got back home, but now that he actually spotted her outside the apartment, the only thing he felt was a shocking wave of fury at how stupid she was being. Didn’t she realize how many people would do terrible things for money? Didn’t she realize that included selling her back to her family?  

Her face was broadcast on every other news channel, and front page on every paper, and there she was… out for a jog as if the world had never hurt her before.

Drew bolted across the street in hopes of reaching her and making - politely asking - her quit being stupid and get back inside before someone saw her. He didn’t think much about how she might react to having her arm grabbed as she jogged (very quickly) past someone. Especially how she might react because he hadn’t thought to say something to give her some indication of who he was before he touched her.

In one fraction of a second, too fast to comprehend, his fingers wrapped around her arm, and the ground disappeared from beneath his feet.

Chapter Text

If he slowed the whole thing down in his mind he could almost manage to understand what had happened. First, he’d grabbed her arm - an incredibly stupid mistake on his part. So much for “genius.” That was the easiest part. He was fairly certain that next her leg had swung against the back of his knees, and he’d been falling backward. That was where things got confusing, but the more he focused on it (and he had to focus on it, so he wouldn’t focus on her) the more he thought he’d figured it out.

Falling back hadn’t made much sense, at first, because he’d landed with a sharp pain in his chin and stinging palms - that was to say, he’d fallen forward. If he was right that the soreness in his shoulder wasn’t just because of falling, then he could assume that at some point in the momentary blur of movement she’d grabbed his arm, twisting it to redirect his weight so he was flung face-first toward the ground at skin-breaking speed. 

Ignoring her curious glance as she gingerly wrapped a bandage over his palm, he snickered to himself. The term beaten path really took on a whole new meaning when one was thrown down on it with such force. 

Unfortunately for his face, his arms, or rather arm, had been extended in the wrong direction. So his chin hit the sidewalk first, with that sharp, warm sort of pain and he knew there’d be blood even before he risked opening his eyes. He didn’t know when or why she let go of his arm but she must have because both of his hands flung around the sides of his body as face met floor. Well, ground but he liked when words did the thing - what was it called? He liked it when words… Nngh! He liked when words started with the same sounds! He was sure there was a word for that. She would know it. He wasn’t going to ask her. 

He had known his hands were bleeding, almost before his failed attempt to catch himself, and his stomach had churned a bit at the idea of having to look at blood, even if it was his own. But then, as he lay on the sidewalk not yet processing what had happened enough to even realize the wind had been knocked out of him, he heard her curse under her breath. His name flowing from her lips next shouldn’t have made him feel like he was laying at the feet of an angel, and yet… Did angels have feet? They tended to look human, right? Could Shea fly? Or was her plasmic gift her only power? 

Being hoisted to his knees by the back of his shirt, mildly choking him in the process, should have been embarrassing but he was too busy pulling oxygen into stunned-stiff lungs to experience emotions much beyond… ouch. And then she was ducking down, putting her face altogether too close to his, and yet, not close enough by half, and once again embarrassment was not an emotion he was capable of feeling.

It had finally settled in as they reached the apartment and he had realized it was the second time in as many days that she’d had to walk him, too shocked to function by himself, back home. His insistence that he could see to his injuries on his own went ignored. Which he was incapable of being annoyed about because he still hadn’t managed to look at himself, and he could feel blood dripping off his fingertips, and the collar of his shirt was so wet it stuck to his skin, and to be perfectly honest he didn’t want to look at all.

So he sat - in a chair since he was a person and not a cat who felt a need to take up what little counter space he had - and let her tend to his wounds. All the while he tried to make himself focus on piecing together what had happened so that he wouldn’t focus on how close she was, or how warm her fingers were on his skin, or how she smelled like—

No, no, no! Not again!

“Drew!” Shea said, voice surprisingly insistent as green-tinted fingers snapped in front of his eyes.

He managed some sort of curious sound in response. One he wasn’t sure he’d ever heard from a human being before. At least she seemed to get that he was trying to ask what she wanted, or what she said that he had clearly managed to miss by trying to keep his brain from remembering she was standing so close. 

“Look up,” she instructed, with a patient tone he thought sounded a little forced. He was pretty sure she had said at some point while she was digging through his first-aid kit that it was impressively well-stocked (a near-compliment he’d tried not to get too flustered about) and explained that first-aid was something she’d been required to learn as a hero. Forced patience wouldn’t be that surprising, he supposed, since she clearly wanted to distance herself from her past life.

He obeyed her command, just as she let out an annoyed sigh, his brain finally catching up to… well, other parts of his brain. Her hands on his cheeks, made his whole body ache with a warm sort of desire. Not - he realized with the faintest glimmer of hope - for anything necessarily sexual or wrong, but to hug her, to hold her close and protect her and let the feeling of safety he felt just by being near her take over entirely.

Still, it was a desire he shouldn’t have wanted and two very different thoughts crashed together in his mind. One that reminded him he was meant to talk to her, especially now that she’d been putting herself in danger by leaving on her own, and another that despite its absurdity managed to be what he blurted out. Not that he could blame himself when her face was so close to his as she worked at cleaning the cut on his chin that he could damn near taste her minty breath, and strands of her hair were tickling his cheeks, and he could feel how warm she was, and her hands kept straying to the back of his neck, and—

“There’s karaoke at the Click-Clack Club on Fridays!” His voice squeaked, not too unlike the high-pitched voice that comes alongside inhaling helium. Unfortunate that there was no such thing around except her presence for him to blame.

She blinked at him, quirked an eyebrow, and in a low voice that made his insides squirm, merely responded, “Oh. Okay,” before asking, “Feeling any better?” 

They were close enough he could have kissed her, and for the briefest moment, his eyes fluttered shut, body willing him to do just that. Intentional or not he wasn’t sure, but either way, her hand landing lightly on his knee as her other thumb stroked over the bandages she’d finished placing on his face sent a rolling heat past his navel and a cold clarity to his mind. 

“Yeah, it’s fine, thanks. I– I gotta go.” 

It was his turn to ignore her as she protested through the bathroom door that his bandages were going to have to be changed after he turned the shower on. Mentally begging her to stop talking so he could focus on something that wasn’t her he wrestled out of his clothes - gagging when he saw his stained shirt - and all but fell into the stream of water. Icy cold water. He almost yelped, despite having been well aware that he’d set the temperature so low.

He had really hoped that the whole “cold shower” trick would work for him but after more time than he’d ever wasted in a shower before, the frigid water had proven to do nothing more than make his teeth chatter and convince him that his skin was turning blue. And, like Shea had warned him, made the fresh bandages she’d just painstakingly applied curl and slip off.  Still, the throbbing warmth between his legs was unaffected.

 Frustrated in more ways than one, Drew practically slapped the faucet into the red. It was his bathroom, and it wasn’t like anybody was going to burst in and catch him, and– and– and what did it matter, anyway?  

As steam fogged the bathroom, obscuring his vision even more, something new - guilt? shame? - began coiling in his stomach, even before he gave into some primal desire and wrapped his hand around himself. The sting was easy enough to ignore when what he was doing otherwise felt so relieving. 

With his forehead pressed to the damp wall of the shower, water and sweat mixing together to drip down his back, he panted like a dog, twisting the shower curtain in his fist as a wave of pure, mortifying bliss coursed through him. Sooner than expected, he was grabbing for the soap, needing to scrub himself clean for the second time in one shower. 

He didn’t know how his body could feel so… so good after what he’d just done, how his muscles could feel relaxed when he feared his guilt would leave him with his head in the toilet for the next hour. Worse still, he couldn’t believe how easy it was to force himself to swallow his shame and re-dress like he hadn’t just masturbated because of the girl living in his spare bedroom. 

The act, he tried to justify to himself, was completely natural - healthy, even!  Nearly every pubescent human being masturbates! In fact, other animals were known to do so as well! His justifications didn’t change the fact that his reasoning was disgusting, and the awful feelings burrowed their way back into his tummy quickly enough. 

Staring at himself in a fogged-up mirror, through (miraculously unbroken) fogged-up lenses, he could barely recognize his reflection. Good. He didn’t deserve to be recognizably human. 

The door handle was abnormally cold in his cut-up hand, and he almost wanted to believe that it was meant to be a warning for him to not go back outside the bathroom. But he knew he couldn’t lock himself away for much longer, so he pushed open the door, wincing at the squeak of the hinges. 

A familiar voice captured his attention and all at once everything that had just happened was pushed to the back of his mind. Wandering over, he rested his elbows on the back of the couch, then hissed when he went to rest his chin on his hands. 

“I have to actually watch this now, don’t I?” Shea grumbled, and he could hear the roll of her eyes in her tone. 

He nodded though he was hardly paying attention to her. 

“What is the world’s largest volcano?” the host of Trivia Tonight asked. 

He blurted out the answer, “Mauna Loa!” even before any of the contestants could then was ridiculously relieved he was right. Although he hadn’t expected to be wrong, he had realized that it would have been embarrassing to be wrong in front of Shea. 

“You know, it erupted in April,” he informed her, to which he received no response. “It has an elevation of—”

“Are you going to sit down or not?” she snipped at him. Startled, he realized he’d avoided making eye contact with her since joining her in watching the show. He’d even resorted to reciting useless facts - a nervous habit that had gotten him beaten up more often than was fair when he was younger. It was a little nice to know that, despite his bandaged palms and face... she didn’t actually want to hurt him. It was a little too nice to know that she had been the one to take care of him. 

Forcing his focus back to the show he squeaked out a response he knew wasn’t understandable and meandered around the side of the couch. He sank onto the cushion further from her. Something nagged at the back of his mind - something he was meant to talk about - but he ignored it in favor of listening to the next question. 

“What popular home computer was introduced in January of 1982?”

“Commodore 64!” Drew answered, perhaps a little too readily, then added in a wistful sigh, “They’re really neat. I wish I could afford one.”

“Yeah,” Shea murmured, and there was something about that that made him glance over. If he’d hoped to understand any emotion she was feeling it didn’t work. Her face looked blank from the side, and she wasn’t looking at him anymore. A part of him snickered at the thought that his dyslexia made even emotions unreadable. He had enough awareness not to laugh out loud, not sure how he would explain his laughter if she asked. 

A swell of pride bloomed in his chest - a welcome change from the emotions that had been living within him all day - as he correctly answered a third and fourth question in a row. Eagerly leaning forward as the category shifted from technology and science to movies from the 70’s he was confident he’d manage to do just as well. He wondered if Shea was impressed, though he still found himself too nervous to look at her. A moment later he shook that thought from his mind, reminding himself he shouldn’t be trying to impress her. 

As intent on answering the questions as he was, he’d all but forgotten Shea’s presence beside him until he felt the subtle shift of the couch cushion as she scooched closer. Alarm bells blared in his head, and he very nearly began babbling about rules when her feather-light touch on his fingers choked off any coherent thought. Again. 

“Told you so,” she mocked, with a nod to his disintegrating bandages, though he assumed she was only half-joking. 

Despite managing to roll his eyes, he couldn’t muster up any sort of teasing response and instead offered a meek apology. 

She scoffed, looking disgusted and he almost winced. Would have, too, if it weren’t for her quickly muttered, “You’re not the one who should be sorry.” 

All at once, her words from the night before bothered him immensely more than they had when she’d said them. “You are scared, aren’t you?” He stood by the fact that he wasn’t afraid of her, even if she had given him a somewhat painful lesson into why he ought to be. But he’d had far worse injuries given to him by people with far more malicious intentions. At least she didn’t break his glasses.

“I’d call it even,” he joked, worrying he sounded too nervous for it to have come across quite right. “For– For burning your hands.”

She only scoffed again, and he was sure she wouldn’t agree that what he’d very quickly understood as an impulsive defensive reaction on her part, was at all the same as a mistake made in the kitchen that she protected him from. It was fairly relieving, given that train of thought, that she told him she was going to rebandage his hands before he could make the mistake of trying to… well, comfort her, he supposed. 

Drew barely managed to peel his eyes away from her as she walked off to collect the first-aid kit again, insisting to himself that he had not been looking at her so much as just… being distracted by movement. He really wasn’t a very good liar. 

“What alliterative 1974 movie musical featured a ‘planet-hopping’ journey?”

In the same moment that the answer popped into his head, he exclaimed, “Alliteration!” so suddenly that he scarcely heard Shea snickering as she came back in.

“That’s not what alliterative means, Doc,” she informed him with that casual mocking tone that intrigued him as much as it frustrated him. 

Waving a dismissive hand in her direction he replied, “The movies called The Puny Potentate,” though he decided against explaining that he’d been incapable of thinking of the term earlier that evening. He wasn’t sure he could explain why. He wasn’t even sure he remembered why anymore.

Her silence was what brought his attention back to her. She didn’t offer even a dismissive acknowledgment that he spoke, before or after his answer was confirmed correct. Risking a glance he saw her frowning at the screen. 

Before he could ask if she was alright, she spoke. Her voice was surprisingly quiet as she said, “I remember that movie. I saw it in theaters.” She’d gotten a dazed sort of look on her face. A look that concerned him, not because he was afraid she was hurt, but well— actually, yes concerned that she was hurt. Just not… physically. 

“Did you?” he managed, thinking maybe… maybe she just needed to talk. Which he noted was quite contrary to his earlier relief at not having to try and comfort her.

“My older brothers and I saved up all the money we could doing odd jobs for the neighbors for weeks.” She chuckled quietly to herself and added, “I got off easy enough, Heath’s friend, Wren, paid me a nickel and dime a night to watch his parakeet, or whatever that squawking feathered demon was, while his family went on a weeklong bird-watching trip.” 

He rapidly became so focused on her words that he almost jumped out of his own skin when she snatched his hand and began re-applying the off-brand healing salve. 

“We used it to treat our parents to a day at the movies, complete with a babysitter for Wendell and Westley, for their anniversary. It— It was the best thing we could think to give them.” Her already quiet voice dropped to a near-silent whisper he had to strain to hear. “I had saved my birthday money for three months just to buy popcorn for us. That— that was the last Christmas before…” 

Her glowing hand cast the room in a green-tinged light, that was as enchanting as every other time he’d seen it. Although part of him started to wonder if she was showing it off on purpose. Did she know how hypnotizing and - unfortunately for him - how much of an… an aphrodisiac he found it to be?. 

For a blip in time, quickly stamped out by guilt gurgling in his belly, he was actually glad he’d done what he had while he was in the shower. He was too drained - not the right word to use! not the right word to use! - for any more unfortunate physical displays of arousal to occur within the lower regions of his body. 

Then the glow went out and her fingers, still hot from her personal inferno, wrapped around his hand to bring it towards her chest. His breath caught in his throat and for a moment he feared he wasn’t quite as drained - why would he use that word, again?! - as he’d hoped he was, but then she began to wrap bandages snugly around his hand, and warmth spread through him as it had when she’d first bandaged his wounds. That was to say, it spread from his head all the way to his toes, bringing him more relief than he thought possible at the fact that the heat didn’t just pool around certain extremities. 

His focus drifting away as he relaxed, he had a sudden thought that something about her story didn’t quite make sense. If the movie had come out in ‘74 then… Hadn’t she said that she’d been nine when the whole comet and weird glowing superpower thing happened? But then wouldn’t she have…?

One look at her face, steely gaze shifting between his hands and the screen, he felt certain encouraging further conversation on the subject would be unwise. He was probably too tired to be attempting mental math from the little bits and pieces of her life she’d told him about, anyway, and the thought was abandoned almost as quickly as it popped into his head. He probably wasn’t remembering right.

“What film, often accused of causing medical emergencies from heart attacks to miscarriages, was based on a true story?”

It was the first question in the episode he didn’t know the answer to. Shea was happy to fill in the void, but when she cheerily proclaimed, “The Exorciser!” he thought he was going to be sick. Or cry. 

“Please tell me you’re kidding,” he begged, through a series of strange stammered sounds.  She shook her head, shooting him a smirk which he could only think of as… scary - and not in the scarily beautiful way he usually thought of her. Sure enough, the seconds passed and the host proclaimed the contestant who’d said the same horrific words Shea had, had gotten the answer right.

Snagging his now fully bandaged hands away from her - how long had she just been holding his hand like that? Why had she just been holding his hand like that? - Drew grabbed at the blanket, throwing it over his head the moment he managed to pull it to him. He almost didn’t realize he was quietly chanting, “No, no, no, no…” under his breath. 

“You alright there, dork-boy?” Dork-boy. That was a new one. 

He tried to answer. The fact that he only managed to continue his chant ever-so-slightly louder was sure to be answer enough. He thought he’d thrown in a “pest” somewhere in the middle of all that, though he really couldn’t be totally sure of it.

“Hey,” her voice called to him, so gentle it seemed almost ethereal, like her gossamery touch as her hand grazed his shoulder. At least, he assumed it was her hand. What if it wasn’t? What if she was gone and something else was touching him, and it had hurt her, had taken her, and was coming for him too, just like he’d been sure the monster under his childhood bed used to try and get to him because there was nobody who knew how to keep the monsters out after—

He ripped the blanket off his head and grabbed tightly to her arm - which hurt, but was unimportant in the grand scheme of the horrifying paths his overactive imagination was already starting to take him down again. 

“I… I’m sorry I made you watch that with me,” she murmured at the same time he shakily demanded, “Why would you let me watch that if you knew?”

Her phrasing made him pause. She hadn’t made him do anything. Sure, she’d teased him enough, challenged him enough, that he’d almost felt like he couldn’t just say no, but she hadn’t actually made him watch it. He could blame her for having the idea to bring that horrific movie into his apartment in the first place, but beyond that, he’d just… gone along with it.

James, who despite this event Drew still considered his closest friend, had once sat on Drew’s freshman dorm bed with a bloody nose he wouldn’t stop, therefore making him see a running stream of fresh blood, dripping off his chin, onto his shirt and Drew’s own bedsheets. 

He had thrown up almost immediately, and again when he mustered up the willpower to strip the sheets from the bed - sheets which were promptly thrown away, though the waste of money made him want to be sick for entirely different reasons. The nightmares lasted almost a month. It had taken a week of being woken up in the middle of the night by his screams before James said he was sorry he’d messed with him like that - though Drew still wasn’t sure if he had been sorry for himself or for him. 

That, Drew thought, was something that counted as making him see something horrifying. The teasing, though it made him feel an almost unignorable desire to prove himself, had still not been something he was physically incapable of avoiding. It helped that, for whatever reason, when Shea had teased him for being frightened it had almost seemed like she was deliberately helping to distract him from what was scaring him. James had offered no such courtesy within the constraints of his mockery. 

A small hiccup escaped past his lips, and Drew coiled the blanket tight against his chest, willing the tears to stay away. Though his eyes didn’t feel watery, Shea still shot him an apologetic looking smile.

It faded quickly as she chuckled, “You look like you need your childhood teddy bear back right now.”

He shook his head. “I’ve never had a teddy bear,” he confessed. It wasn’t quite a lie or quite the truth. It was just that the idea of telling her about a childhood spent with decade-old hand-me-downs and toys that were little more than amalgamations of broken and discarded pieces of proper toys that other children in school had abandoned or thrown away wasn’t one he was too thrilled at. He certainly didn’t feel inclined to tell her that his favorite toy growing up had been called Mr. Cuddlesworth, and had been three different kinds of girls dolls taped and glued together with the head of a stuffed monkey sewn on top. 

He thought he remembered having a teddy bear when he was young, but he wasn’t sure what had happened to it - if it had existed at all. There had for sure been one that could have been passed down to him, but he’d never felt quite right about taking it, so Mr. Cuddlesworth with his soft monkey head was the closest he’d had to a comfort toy. He wondered if she’d had a teddy bear, but couldn’t bring himself to ask. He doubted she had many childhood comforts left. 

“Are– Are you gonna be okay?” she asked, that gentle tone returning and making him swoo— No! No, he was not swooning over her!

Or maybe he was because it only took a half-second of looking into her eyes for every muscle in his body to uncoil, a feeling of safety he couldn’t quite describe taking over. His head lulled into a nod, and he bit his tongue to resist the urge to say he’d be better if she stayed with him again. He had enough conscious awareness left, despite whatever spell she’d clearly put him under, to know sleeping on the couch together once had been bad enough. Let alone that it had happened multiple times.

He hadn’t even realized he’d actually heard the question, “What 1977 film soundtrack stayed atop the album charts for twenty-four weeks straight?” until the answer, “Sunday Evening Temperature,” was bubbling out of him. He could feel his ears turning pink as he saw her staring at him from the corner of his eye. Evidently biting his tongue could only help him shut up once per evening because he rambled on with more pride than his embarrassment should have allowed him, “There are seventeen songs in the album, and I’ve managed to sing every single one at karaoke at the Click-Clack Club.”

“That sounds like something my brother would do,” She laughed and he immediately relaxed properly, resting back against the couch and even letting the blanket lay lightly in his lap. “Although he would do it all in one night. But Merrick has always been… the kind of person who needs all eyes on him at all times.”

Drew hummed, nodding. “Sometimes this one guy shows up, and I always hate it when he does. He’s gimmicky, and a mic hog.” 

The mic hog always came in with what had to be paint covering every inch of skin, and no matter how many times Drew checked to make sure the guy wasn’t heading toward the stage, he always seemed to pop out of thin air and snag the mic for another half-hour worth of singing. Calling it mediocre was generous. 

“So, is reading the only thing you can’t do, Doc?” she teased, though she seemed a little tense herself, suddenly.

A million thoughts about how he couldn’t get her out of his brain bounced around inside his head. “I can’t see, either,” he joked back. “Without my glasses, I’m legally blind.”

“You’re blind and I’m deaf. As long as my implants don’t get busted the same time your glasses do, we might make a good team.” The laugh that came out of her was surprising, but soon he found he was laughing too.

For once, he decided, being a coward had worked out. He didn’t want her to go, and he was thrilled he’d been too scared of having to say it to… well, talk to her at all. 

“I can’t wait to know you,” he found himself whispering. If she knew what he’d said, she gave no indication beyond asking him to repeat himself - a request he avoided by asking instead, “Are you sure you don’t want to go with me on Friday?”

She blinked and her surprised, “Oh,” surprised him in turn. Had she not understood that he’d been trying to invite her? 

“You’ll be allowed in,” he found himself assuring her. “They just won’t let you drink.” A nagging reminder that she couldn’t drink because she was a teenager picked at his brain until his ears rang but he ignored it the best he could. He didn’t invite her for any reason other than that he would perhaps like to be her friend.

“I… Yeah, okay. I’ll go. But I’m not singing.”

“Oh, I’ll get you to sing someday,” he promised. And somehow he was sure he would, even if that day would not be anytime soon. 

“Good luck with that, dork.” 

“Zip it, pest!” she replied to herself in unison with him. 

The audible sound of her stomach growling stopped him from sputtering out too many entirely incoherent syllables, instead announcing that she needed to eat and - after the episode of Trivia Tonight ended on an absurd bonus question that stumped them both - skittered off to the kitchen to scrounge up something for dinner. When she mockingly suggested that if he had any plans to burn a building down that night he knew where to find her, he joked that she could help by reading the multitude of chapters in his textbooks he had to read for classes the next day. 

Cytoskeletal proteins and the potential applications of the concept to the future of robotics was even more fascinating, Drew secretly declared to himself, when she was the one reading the text to him.

When she slipped off to her room, shortly after winning the argument about whether or not he needed new bandages on his chin as well and seemingly unknowingly turning him to putty under the gentle warmth of her fingertips pressed lightly to his cheeks, he couldn’t help but stare at her door for several minutes. Finally, he whispered again, “I can’t wait to know you.” And the knowledge that she was so close kept the nightmares he’d been sure he would have from finding their way to him. 

His last thought before falling asleep was a somewhat amusing thought that Shea was quickly becoming the teddy bear he relied on for protection. Even if she had thrown him earlier. It really only served to make her more incredible, in his mind, feeling first-hand her effortless skill. 

No. No, he didn’t want her to go at all. 

Chapter Text

It wasn’t that the next two days were boring - arguing with Shea about not leaving the apartment without him had been frustrating, worrying, but certainly not boring - it was just that the very moment his last lecture ended on Friday he shot out of his seat and booked it to the door. He might have run all the way to the bus stop, maybe even to the apartment, if the tightness in his chest hadn’t reminded him of the inhaler he’d stuffed away in the back of his nightstand drawer over a year ago. He’d gotten tired of being teased for carrying it and had decided it was worth the risk. And usually, it was. Besides! He’d been… what, eighteen, the last time he’d had an attack? Clearly, he must not have any real actual need for the inhaler after three years. 

Still, he was too excited to risk the chance of having an attack and having to wait another week for the chance to drag Shea to karaoke. And despite her insistence that she would not be singing at all that night, he was increasingly convinced he would get her to. And even if he didn’t, he really just wanted them both to have a fun night together. Which they could, he thought a little bitterly as he boarded the bus, so long as that darned mic-hogging, gimmicky, spotlight thief didn’t show up. 

The bus moved agonizingly slow as if the driver had set off with the intention of making Drew squirm impatiently in his seat as much as possible. Once or twice he even would have sworn they’d stopped at spots the bus route didn’t go to, normally. He almost tripped three separate times in his haste to get off the bus, when it finally arrived at his stop. 

He only slowed down when the lecture Shea had given him the night before about giving open wounds the chance to heal by not hitting them against every available surface popped into his mind. But it wasn’t his fault! The couch had definitely moved! He’d trekked blindly through that apartment countless times before! Well… seventy-three times since he’d moved in. Ah. He could actually count it. But he had never tripped over the couch like that before. 

He’d felt bad for a bit, about waking Shea with his surprised exclamation as he tumbled to the ground. Of course, she wouldn’t hear a word about the couch moving, lecturing on and on as she bandaged his hands again, until a stray thought about kissing her to shut her up crossed his mind. He immediately gave in, agreed it was his fault, and sat in the chair she’d all but shoved him in, waiting with feigned patience for her to find his glasses for him. 

He should have realized she’d been messing with him faster than he did, but it wasn’t until he heard her giggling as her blurry form somewhat dramatically searched the apartment, that he’d realized his glasses were on top of his head the whole time. Blushing furiously, he’d made to scramble back to bed with scarcely a goodnight, but she’d smiled so sweetly at him that he froze in place. 

“I see you found ‘em,” she’d teased, that half-asleep smile still plastered to her face. It was the first time he noticed her hair, mussed up from sleep in a way that looked adorable rather than sloppy. 

“No thanks to you, pest,” he’d grumbled, his annoyance half-hearted at best.

She’d only smiled again, rubbing at her eyes with one balled-up fist, before insisting that he should get some sleep. “I’d tell you to keep an eye on your glasses,” she’d mumbled, squeezing past him close enough her arm grazed against his chest and torturous flares of warmth spread to every atom of his anatomy. “But I guess that’s not really possible for you.” After a pause, she glanced back and added, “If you don’t hurt your hands again, the bandages can come off while we’re at karaoke.”

And just like that, she’d been gone, leaving him in a puddle of uncertain emotions with that dopey smile plastered to his face, like it always seemed to be when he saw her. 

Evidently, he didn’t slow down enough before reaching the apartment. When he swung open the door, it slammed against the wall and Shea very slowly glanced up at him as he dug his heels into the carpet to stop himself from getting caught moving any faster than he normally did. Much as it had been nice every time she’d reapplied his bandages, he really had no desire to wear them at karaoke. Even if she was insistent that they would go right back on as soon as they got back. 

With a quirked eyebrow, she asked him, “Are you being chased, or did you just suddenly have a desire to put a hole in the wall?”

In a panic, he quickly shut the door, scanning the wall for any sign of damage. When she snorted out a laugh he turned and stuck his tongue out at her. Much as he was embarrassed by his own childish impulses every time he let them win over, he was happy that he gave in to them so often. Anything to make himself unappealing to her. Not that, as previous evidence would suggest, he really needed extra help being repulsive to women. 

For a moment he was split between telling her that she really should have reacted more quickly to his presence (given the growing number of flyers burnt to ash in their trashcan and the fact she’d effectively banned television news) and reminding her it was his apartment, so he could open doors however he pleased. In the end, he did neither, instead latching onto her arm to pull her to feet while he practically bounced in place, unable to stop the excited stream of babbled words. 

He knew he must have managed to get to his point of telling her to get ready to go, because she pushed him away, laughing, “Alright, alright! I’ll go get dressed just— Sheesh! Calm down.”

He wouldn’t - couldn’t! - calm down! And from the smile she gave him as they headed toward their separate bedrooms, he decided she must not actually be all that bothered by his eagerness. After two days of his, surely obnoxious, nonstop chatter about how much fun karaoke was, and how the first Friday of fall term was always the best, he figured she should have been well prepared for his energy levels to skyrocket as they had.

Then again, after the same two days, he should have been more prepared to see Shea dressed for a night out. His heart caught in his throat as he took in how… put simply, perfect she looked. There wasn’t anything particularly impressive about her outfit - jeans and the Joan Jett tank top she’d looked so nice in at the thrift shop he hadn’t been able to bring himself to point out it was amongst her more expensive items. No, it wasn’t that the outfit itself was nice, it was that she just… she seemed happy, and he almost wondered if he’d actually seen her look happy before then. Sure, he’d heard her laugh, and he’d seen her beautiful smile before, but had he seen her look so relaxed and eager? Maybe he had. She’d sure been more relaxed than him when she— Nope. He was not thinking about that awful movie.

Still, she looked so wonderful he just wanted to melt, and the feeling only grew when she brushed past him, asking if they were going to eat before they left or not. He wasn’t sure any noise actually came out when he tried to respond. If it did it certainly wasn’t anything coherent cause she glanced over her shoulder at him, raising an eyebrow before starting to laugh.

He cleared his throat, about to try again, when embarrassment struck, his ears turning warm, and he quickly rushed past her and into the kitchen with his head ducked. She pushed his shoulder, saying something teasing he didn’t quite hear, as she hopped up onto the counter.

Peanut butter and jelly was, by far, not the most lavish meal he’d ever made. By cost alone, that title had to go to the fresh lobster bisque he’d made about a year prior. When James’s father had announced a craving and willingness to pay for a good bowl of the glop (Drew had never had much fondness for seafood), he’d been quick to offer to make an attempt. Although the man stood just outside the kitchen, bemoaning the notion that, “Young men these days are too feminine! What kind of man does the cooking?” Drew had found himself overwhelmingly proud despite himself, when the man grudgingly told him it was, “The best damn bisque” he’d had to date.

Nonetheless, Shea seemed perfectly pleased to sit on the counter eating her sandwich while he - somewhere between nervous and excited - chattered away about the songs he was going to sing, and teased her that he was still sure he’d get her to sing. That had gotten him pushed again. 

It wasn’t until they were walking out the door of the building - he wondered if Shea was as relieved as him that his landlord wasn’t perched in his usual spot - that he noticed the belt she wore. He hadn’t really meant to look down like that, but the tank top had ridden up a bit when she’d lifted her arms to throw on the hoodie that he had to admit was now hers more than it was his, and he was weak. Only a small sliver of skin was exposed, but his eyes flicked down to it almost entirely against his will. As fast as he saw it, it was covered up by the hoodie that he was more glad than ever she’d thought to bring with her. 

The image of her skin would have been the one he expected to have burned into his mind, but instead, he couldn’t stop thinking about the neon green belt around her waist. A belt which had come as a pair with the one he currently wore around his own waist. 

He had offered to pay for their bus fare but she’d insisted on walking, and he was incapable of denying her anything so simple, so stopping the thoughts he had about matching was impossible as they started their journey to the Click-Clack Club. 

The belts, Drew thought, looked best when they were together. When it was impossible not to know that they belonged together. They fit like puzzle pieces and he was finding it more and more difficult not to throw his arm around her shoulder and pull her close. Maybe the two of them would fit like puzzle pieces too. 

Several times throughout their walk he found himself all too close to putting his arm around her like that and he almost wondered what the harm might be in doing so. Or at least in taking her hand that was just there against her side, as if begging to be held. Within just a few minutes of walking, he wound up stuffing his hands in his pockets, telling himself he felt cold. It was the first night with any kind of chill in the air, so it wasn’t too unreasonable an idea, even if the stupid part of his brain continued to argue that being in closer proximity to Shea would warm him more than stuffing his clammy fingers in lint-filled pockets.

James and the rest of his friends weren’t typically inclined toward karaoke, but Drew couldn’t help glancing around for any sign of them when Shea grabbed his arm as they rounded the corner. There was just… there was no way. There was no way she’d go grabbing at him like that, moments after he stopped himself from grabbing her hand. 

Her entire existence in his life at all made no sense. He was never lucky enough to get even a moment’s attention from someone like her and… and James had been showing off his fancy new video camera the very same night they met. For a moment he was convinced they had to be behind this, an elaborate prank to convince him a girl he liked might actually like him back - no matter how much he didn’t want to like her. 

He might have started rifling through bushes looking for hidden cameras if he hadn’t caught a glimpse at the look on Shea’s face. He stumbled to a stop when her grip tightened almost painfully. 

“Are… are you okay?” he asked. She looked… scared, almost. Nervous, at the very least. He was immediately on edge. And who wouldn’t be if someone who could easily fight her way out of almost any situation looked nervous? It was perfectly justifiable for him to start getting anxious too!

“Yeah, I’m fine,” she replied, a moment too late for him to believe her.

“Shea?” he urged, his own voice growing as tense as hers. 

“I just didn’t expect it to be this crowded,” she snipped. He would have worried she was angry with him if she hadn’t stepped even closer against his side, so close he could he might as well have had his arm around her shoulder as he’d wanted before. 

Idiot! What kind of a moron wouldn’t think about the crowd when going out with a girl who had a bounty on her head? Not—! Not that they were “going out” as if on a date! Just “going out” as in out of the apartment! Together. As… friends? He wasn’t sure. But it definitely wasn’t a date! She had barely left his side at the grocery store! What could have possibly convinced him it would be okay to bring her to karaoke on the busiest night of the year? He couldn’t believe how selfish he was.

And yet his offer to go back to the apartment and watch a movie or play a board game or to… well, do something was turned down without any hesitation on her part. 

Meekly he tried again. “Are you sure? There will be other nights for karaoke - I really don’t mind. We can come back when it’s less crowded.”

She insisted again that she was fine, by which point she was pressed so close he was almost tripping over her feet as they walked. And, by which point, their destination was in sight. He pointed the bar out to her, along with the stream of people entering the building, and hoped his unintentional giddy bouncing wouldn’t make her feel like she couldn’t change her mind. Excited as he might be he cared more about making sure she felt safe. 

He didn’t know what he expected her to say but, “I thought you said this place was a club ,” was certainly not it. 

A sharp laugh burst out of him as he remembered that she would have absolutely no reason to know that “Click-Clack Club” was nothing more than a colloquial moniker - a term he utilized in his explanation, earning himself a pat on the head for using it correctly. 

He rolled his eyes at her and hoped his face didn’t show how flustered he was. “Since most people that come here are MIST students, a rumor started a few years back that - in the silence between songs - you can hear the click-clack of computer keys that aren’t even there.” He shrugged. “I guess some people got angry about that since MIST isn’t just computers and technology, but it stuck anyway. Nobody really calls this place anything other than the Click-Clack Club anymore. Still one of the most popular dives in town, though.”

She stepped away from him, leaving him uncharacteristically chilled, and turned to raise an eyebrow at him. Then she snorted and asked, “You just made that up, didn’t you?”

“What? No!” he protested vehemently, although he was glad to see her relaxing a bit. “It’s true! Ask anybody!”

  Her laughter laced assurances that she believed him weren’t all that convincing, but he elected to ignore it seeing as they had reached the entrance, and her laughter choked out as he - after one final nod from her - swung open the door. The bar was, as was to be expected for the first Friday of the fall semester, fairly crowded. Normally, Drew would be perfectly fine without a table, but for Shea’s sake, he hoped they could manage to get one. Besides, he didn’t want to lose her in the crowd of people grooving to the music on the dance floor. 

He could see someone pulling the karaoke machine onto the stage, and was instantly filled with so much excitement that Shea’s grip on his arm was the only thing that stopped him from running through the door. 

“Can you fly over the moon after we get inside?” she teased, moving back into him until his breath caught in his throat and his heart fluttered inside his chest.

He couldn’t say no. 

And he couldn’t believe their luck. Not only was there a small table available right next to the stage, but after scanning the room several times Drew was absolutely certain that there were no mic hogging, show-stealing, pain-in-the-butts - pains-in-the-butt? - at the Click-Clack Club. And on top of that! On top of all that, Drew was third on the sign-up list which was, he was more than certain, the best position to be in for karaoke. Nobody really pays much mind to the first singer. The second singer is usually the underdog of the night because people are still comparing them to the recorded music that stops playing to make way for karaoke. But the third singer! Oh, the third singer gets to feel like a god. Everybody is paying attention, but by then they’re in the mood for karaoke. They can sing off-key, crack on every note, and miss half the words, but it won’t matter. They’ll get cheers all night. 

Not that Drew would sing badly enough to need to be the third singer to get cheers! He may not be the next Elvis or anything, but he certainly didn’t consider himself a bad singer. 

To his relief, Shea didn’t ask him to get her alcohol when he announced his first trip to the bar. Although, her request for a virgin strawberry daiquiri did make him decide he wanted the same thing, just… alcoholic. He was fairly certain, as nerves started bubbling in his stomach for the first time since he began attending karaoke night, that he was going to need to get tipsy to relax and get through the night. She wasn’t even teasing him about his upcoming moment in the spotlight and he was still terrified he may mess up in front of her. Or that even if he sang perfectly she still wouldn’t like it. 

He couldn’t wrap his head around why Shea, who he spied watching him get their drinks with a grin, was making him so nervous, but he was nervous enough that by the time the bartender walked away he had completely forgotten which of the identical drinks was his and which was hers. She laughed when he sheepishly confessed his uncertainty to her, and although there was no cruelty behind the laugh he wished he’d just ordered something different. Before he could say anything else she’d seized both drinks. She sipped one, then the other. 

“This one’s yours,” she declared, passing the second back to him as he sat in the stool beside hers. As if proving his third-singer theory correct, his mind was wholly on the fact that her lips were just on the straw that he was now drinking from, and he didn’t even notice the first singer until the song ended and the second singer walked on stage.

If he were in more of a mood to pay attention, the second singer may not have seemed quite so bad, but as it was he was flustered and nervous and that made everything about the poor woman’s karaoke performance seem bad. Drew noticed every missed note, every offbeat word, and just how awkward it seemed when the girl tried to engage the crowd by dancing and pointing at seemingly random individuals.

To his delight and dismay, her song was soon over, and he was next to walk on stage. As he stood from the table Shea grabbed his hand and pulled him so close he thought she might kiss him again. 

But then she just whispered, scarcely loud enough to be heard, “Don’t look at me while you’re up there.” He didn’t have the chance to ask what she meant before she grinned and added, “Good luck, dork,” with a sly wink that made him wish she had kissed him again. It would have thrown him off less than the wink had. 

Well, no, he knew if she’d kissed him again he would have been stunned silent for the remainder of the night, but the wink did fluster him enough he panicked and almost forgot the words to Fancy-Free. Only almost though. 

As he reached the middle of the song he found the crowd fading out of his sight, the lyrics flowing out of him without effort while he bopped around the stage as if he couldn’t fight the urge to dance. The only person he could still see was her. She looked gorgeous, and in the dim, multi-colored lighting of the Click-Clack club, even he could forget her skin actually was tinged green. All at once, he remembered her instruction not to look at her, as his eyes settled on the grin lighting up her face. His movements faltered as he jerked his head to look away, although he was sure he was still singing just fine. 

Why wouldn’t she want him to look at her? Was he that embarrassing to be around? James had once informed him that, when he got excited, he was embarrassing to be around. He’d refused to elaborate when Drew asked what exactly it was he’d done to be embarrassing and for nearly two weeks he sat in his dorm making a mental list of all the traits that might be embarrassing for his friends. 

Was it his hair, which refused to stay in place except when he used the expensive hair-gel he tried to reserve for special occasions? Or was it that he was never aware of when he was being too loud? Was she embarrassed by the way he bounced around when he was enjoying himself? Or was it that his teeth brought too much attention to how strange his eyes looked behind his glasses when he smiled? 

His song ended, and the crowd began to cheer as he passed his microphone to the next participant. Despite the overwhelming sound, he swore he could hear her delighted giggle above the crowd. He was even more certain it was her he’d heard when he reached the table and she nudged his shoulder before he could sit. 

“Not half bad, nerd,” she said, almost sounding impressed. Her eyes, however, were elsewhere.

And all at once, it clicked. She was still looking around for any sign of a threat, and by looking at her like that he might have just sent more unwanted attention her way. A young, muscular man in a jean jacket that didn’t match his jeans and certainly didn’t match the neon shirt he wore underneath, with unkempt hair that (in Drew’s opinion) didn’t match his ugly mug, may not have been exactly the kind of attention Shea was avoiding, but Drew was for sure kicking himself for glancing at her. 

It didn’t help that the man snagged the stool from under him just as he began to sit down, leaving Drew to notice his presence for the first time as he fell, sprawling, to the cold, sticky-floor. 

“You know, you’ve got a righteous bod,” he heard the… the creepy jerk say, as he climbed back to his feet, face flushing fire-hot with humiliation. He tried to pretend there weren’t tears brimming in his eyes, as he mentally resigned himself to finding somewhere off to the side to stand. 

Shea’s voice was sharp and cold as she responded, “You’re in my friend’s seat. Move.” The murderous undertones even made him gulp, although he was the one she was defending. Despite not likely knowing how terrifying she truly was, the creepy jerk scoffed and walked off leaving Drew to take his seat.

“Thanks,” he muttered, his good mood taking a sharp turn for the depths of self-hatred. Why couldn’t he just stand up for himself? Yeah, it was nice that she defended him and all, but he was still as humiliated as he would have been if the guy had made a point of dumping a drink over his head or throwing him into the garbage - both of which had happened to him before. He couldn’t even bring himself to look at her.

Her sudden derisive snort brought his focus back to her. “You know, the more we get out the happier I am that you’re who I ran into at the bus stop.” 

His heart swelled and the negative thoughts faded from his mind as the all-consuming desire to kiss her took over yet again. He settled on flashing a grin - not even worrying that his teeth would make his eyes look weird - and jokingly informing her that he was glad she’d bullied him into letting her stay. 

“I’d hardly say bullied,” she grumbled, taking a sip of her drink. 

Or rather, he realized with a sputtered, “Hey!” in protest, his drink. Her’s was already empty next to her. “You’re not allowed to drink this,” he hissed, “You’re not old enough!”

“Yeah,” she sighed, “I know.” And she took another sip. 

He scoffed and decided that as long as nobody else noticed… she’d earned the right to one alcoholic drink for the night, for standing up for him. But he wasn’t going to let her have any more than that! He swore it!

Naturally, that meant that a few hours later she’d had nearly as much as he had between stealing sips of his drink when she thought he wasn’t looking and ‘taste-testing’ drinks other guys had sent to her while he was singing, despite his repeatedly reminding the bartender that she was sixteen. 

While he was getting tipsy and a little sleepy, she seemed to be growing less and less suspicious of the people in the bar - though not enough that she ever stopped scanning the building every few minutes.

He was very nearly ready to declare his next song his last and go home for the night when on a random impulse he mimicked her as she scanned the crowd again. His eyes settled on his most dreaded karaoke rival walking through the door, hatred immediately sobering him up. Hatred and Shea’s bone-shatteringly tight grip suddenly latching onto his arm.

The purple-clad mic hog strolled over to the stage without so much as a glimpse in their direction and just as Drew complained, “Oh great, that guy is here,” Shea urgently demanded, “We need to get out of here. Now.”

Without another word he was yanked from his seat and was stumbling out into the cool, dark night behind her. She cursed under her breath and froze in place so suddenly he bumped right into her.

“You know, you could have left a note,” a voice mocked, and Drew must have been more drunk than he realized because for the life of him he couldn’t see who was speaking. “But I suppose it’s not easy sharing the spotlight with me, eh, She-She?”

Chapter Text

Drew had just enough time to wonder how difficult it could be to share the spotlight with someone invisible when an all too familiar purple-clad mic-hog seemed to grow right before his eyes, like some kind of Shrinky-Dink put in reverse. 

Three thoughts occurred to him as he watched the – boy? teenager? young man? – endure this rapid growth spurt. He thought about the fact that he should buy some Shrinky-Dinks. He cringed at his own curiosity of how painful the… teenager’s bodily expansion must be (his own growth spurts had been painful enough and they’d taken months for a few mere inches). And all at once, he realized that perhaps the purple wasn’t so much a gimmick as it was the result of an astronomically unlucky lesson in astronomy. Which was to say, he was one of those brothers Shea had mentioned. 

Before he had a semblance of a chance to express any of these thoughts, Shea was shoving him behind her with enough force that he barely stopped himself from falling to the ground. His protests died in his throat when flickering green flames engulfed her hands, a small pool of water puddled nearby a drain, reflecting her fiery rage. 

“I’ll be straight with you,” Shea snickered at her brother – Drew was sure that was who he was – “you’re the last moron I expected to come looking for me. I figured they’d put the twins on my case before bothering with you.”

“I’m hurt,” the mic-hog drawled. 

Before he could say anything more a laugh burst out of Drew. He could see now why she would go and lock her brother into a desk drawer. The mental image was startlingly hilarious. Both super-powered teens glanced at him in surprise as if they’d already forgotten he was there. 

Shea looked a bit horrified and he suspected her goal had been for him to be forgotten. Forgotten was safer, which became evident enough when the boy disappeared only to pop back up behind him and throw an arm over his shoulders.

Drew yelped like a kicked puppy, and he noticed Shea’s flames creeping higher up her arms. He was sure he’d have a weapon pressed against his throat or something else horrible, but the boy was merely resting against him. 

“She-She!” he exclaimed, “Why didn’t you say you’d gone and gotten yourself a boyfriend?”

“Let go of him!” The nervous edge to her voice made him nervous in turn, but some part of him delighted in the fact that she hadn’t corrected him on the ‘boyfriend’ comment. 

Sixteen. She was sixteen, he reminded himself. For the billionth time.

“I just wanna take a look. He’s cute!” Drew tried to pull away as the mic-hog snagged at his glasses with his free hand, but the boy had a surprisingly tight grasp on him. “Geeky. Didn’t think that was your type but then again they’ve always liked you. Remember Wren? Never did understand why he liked you more than me.” 

“Give me those,” Drew finally snapped, reaching out for his glasses and missing by a mile when the boy shrunk out of reach again. 

“Don’t talk to him,” Shea snapped in his direction a brief moment before her brother reappeared, his glasses on his face. “Merrick! Knock it off! Just leave him out of this!”

Merrick. That must be… Mego? Was that the name Drew had read in the paper? Hego, Mego, Shego, and then… yes, the twins were both called Wego which Drew thought must get mighty confusing.

Given the look on her face, he started to realize that he might be hard-pressed just to get her back home – to the safety of their apartment. 

Merrick went still, staring at his sister. “Don’t call me that,” he whispered. “Just don’t. Don’t do this now.”

Drew managed to snag his glasses and let himself be pulled back behind Shea, whose flames had gone out, though her hands were still up protectively. Something had clearly passed between the two siblings, and now things were quietly tense. He couldn’t be sure if he was more uncomfortable now than he had been when her brothers seemed more inclined to tease her.

“You picked one hell of a time to run away, you know. The ceremony is in—”

“I know when the ceremony is.”

“Ceremony?” Drew interrupted, and aside from a warning jab of Shea’s elbow into his ribs, neither of them paid him any attention.

“Yeah, well. Mom and Dad are freaking out big time and it’s all because you decided to sneak off and – what? Bang some random desperate dork?”

“Merrick!” Shea snapped again, her face turning bright green and arms flaring up again.

At the same time, Drew could only manage a weak, “Hey!” in protest, his own face burning with embarrassment. 

“Stop calling me that!” 

“What, stop calling you your name? It’s your name, Merrick!”

“Just shut up! You have to come home before they lose it! They have us out looking for you all night! None of us have gotten a full night’s sleep since you left! Even Wego is getting scared and it’s your fault!”

First, he thought about how strange it was to refer to two Wegos as one Wego, but then, despite Shea’s instructions not to talk to her brother, Drew couldn’t help blurting out, “Don’t blame her for your shitty parents!” 

This naturally proved to be a mistake, because moments later his arm was wrenched behind his back at a painful angle as Merrick poofed out of sight again. 

“Don’t make this more difficult than it has to be, Shego,” Merrick warned. Drew couldn’t help but note the way his voice wavered as he spoke, even as he gritted his teeth and tried to focus on the sidewalk to keep from making any sort of pained sound. “They had tracking devices made for all of us. I’ve got one for you. So, put it on, come home, and I won’t hurt him.”

Drew failed to bite back a hiss of pain as his arm was pushed even further, likely moments away from breaking.

“Shea, don’t. Just run!”

She didn’t listen to him. He didn’t expect her to. He wished she would.

There was a panicked look in her eyes, a look the likes of which he had never seen in another human before. She looked like a wild animal caught in a trap she knew was inescapable. There was a part of him that couldn’t help feeling grateful he’d met someone so protective of him, and an equal part that wanted to curse her name for her refusal to think of herself first. What was going to happen to him if she ran? He was sure that would have made it obvious to her brother that threatening him was worth nothing and, if luck should have it, she’d manage to escape and find her way back to the apartment, where he could have happily kept her hidden.

Which, he thought guiltily, he should have done from the beginning. It was his fault she’d been found. If he’d just made her turn around when they noticed the crowd or been more considerate of the fact that he never should have taken her out in the first place… well, she would be safe. Bored maybe, but safe.

The fire went out, not just in her hands, but the light in her eyes seemed to fade as well. Maybe that was just his imagination. He hoped it was. Her arms dropped to her sides in defeat. 

“Let him go,” she pleaded. “You know you don’t have to hurt him.”

“I am sorry, She-She,” Merrick whispered, sounding close to tears himself as he pulled a small black band from his pocket. His grip on Drew’s arm loosened, but he didn’t let go. “I really am.”

“Let him go first, or I swear I’ll burn your face off.” 

Drew suspected Shea tended to make good on her threats – or the boy really was as self-centered and vain as she made him out to be — because no sooner were the words out of her mouth than was his arm released with an almost painful sensation of relief. 

Drew wasn’t sure what came over him, but before he knew what he was doing he’d spun on his heel, swinging his arm in a wild arching punch. His fist connected with the side of Merrick’s head with a solid thwack. Thwack. What a weird word. 

Shea’s gasp rocked him to his core, pushing away his own shock and leaving him worried she’d be upset with him for hitting her brother. Even if the little jerk had almost broken his arm.

“Damn it,” Merrick cursed, grabbing his ear with both hands. Drew secretly hoped it hurt. Seriously, really, properly hurt. 

Neither of them got a chance to process what had just happened before Shea kicked something and they watched the tracking band fly across the street. Merrick let out a shout of rage, vanishing from view. 

He realized only after Shea grabbed him by the arm and started sprinting down the street that his hand absolutely ached. His knuckles throbbed and he worried they might be bleeding. Another round of bandages on his hands sounded horrible. Though, if her brother didn’t catch up and kill him he suspected she might do it herself just for having put himself in more danger. 

“Shea,” he wheezed after what seemed like hours of sprinting, though he knew it had only gotten them a few roads separated from her brother. He’d been doing his best to keep up, but now he stopped all at once, almost letting her pull his arm out its socket as she kept running.

“Drew we don’t– we have to… Drew?”

He must not have looked very good, given the way she stopped talking to look at him. He didn’t feel very good. The back of his nightstand drawer didn’t seem like such a good place for his inhaler anymore, and as his chest constricted more and more with each burning breath he found himself collapsing to his knees. Which should have been terrifying but as she looked down nervously at him he was just… humiliated.  She didn’t seem even the slightest bit winded, and he was choking, breathing so weakly his lungs seemed to whistle with every inhale. 

He screwed his eyes shut, forcing himself to focus on pulling in deep breaths, reminding himself he didn’t need his inhaler. He’d gotten minor attacks like these under control without it for years before he’d abandoned the stupid thing altogether. It didn’t do anything to ease the tightness in his chest.

And certainly, Shea dropping to her knees before him and placing a hand on his cheek didn’t help either. “Are you alright?” she asked softly. She didn’t accept his dismissive handwave as an answer. “Is this a panic attack or asthma?” He didn’t like how gentle her voice was. It sounded so… wrong. She’d spent most of the week jokingly mocking him over practically everything he did. Couldn’t she tease him for his wheezing so they could move on and pretend it never happened? 

After a moment she repeated the question, instructing him to hold up one finger for panic attack or two for asthma. 

“I’m… fine,” he managed between weak gulps of air, shakily climbing to his feet as if to prove it. 

If she wanted to argue, a flash of purple racing toward them made her reconsider. 

She grabbed his arm once again, hauling him inside the closest building. He hadn’t realized she’d been running them back toward the apartment until she pulled him down next to her, squished in a booth at the dreaded Daynight Diner.  

Sticky menus were dropped on the table, and even stickier cups were filled with ice water by a waitress who didn’t bother introducing herself. 

Drew greedily chewed on the ice, relieved as the chill numbed his airways. He didn’t even care that it may well have been a placebo effect, too glad he could breathe again. Meanwhile, Shea tried to hide behind a menu, all the while lecturing him for not telling her he had asthma. 

“I didn’t exactly expect to be running any time soon, Shea,” he grumbled, fishing another ice cube out of a cup he refused to hold to his lips. “And it’s been years since I’ve had an attack. Besides, it wasn’t that bad.”

“I’m sorry, how is collapsing to your knees because you can’t breathe not that bad?”

“I’m okay now,” he said, trying to hide the slight wheeze still crushing his lungs. Given the roll of her eyes, he’d failed. “I didn’t even need my inhaler!”

“Where is your inhaler?”

“I don’t have it.”

“Where is it?”

He gulped, shrinking under her glare. “It’s in my nightstand, alright? I didn’t think I’d need it.”
“You’re keeping it with you from now on.”

“And I’m the one that acts like a mom?”

“Yeah, you are! I mean—”

“Do you two ever shut up?” Merrick griped, growing to full size on the bench across from them. Drew managed not to yelp, but Shea didn’t react to her brother's sudden and unwelcome presence at all.

“— It's funny how you make such a big deal about whether or not I ate lunch, but can’t be bothered to carry something that could save your life,” Shea argued back, ignoring Merrick entirely. The nudge of her knee knocking against his let Drew know she expected him to do the same.

He stammered awkwardly before managing, “I… I really haven’t needed it for years.” His poker face wasn’t nearly as good as hers and in between stolen glances at Merrick’s increasingly annoyed expression, he had the thought that he ought to teach Shea to play poker. And also he should learn to play poker. 

“I’m not twelve anymore, Shego, ignoring me won’t work.”

“I don’t care that you haven’t needed it, you could need it! You needed it tonight!” Drew wouldn’t have even noticed her mild flinch at her hero name if it weren’t for the way her nails dug into the ripped-up foam of the bench between them. 

Despite their ongoing argument, he put his hand over hers, gently loosening her tense grasp, before noticing the expression on her face and pulling his hand away. “Did you not notice the part where I’m fine?” 

Well, were they actually still arguing at all? Or were they just putting up a pretense for the sake of upsetting her brother? Either way, he hoped Merrick couldn’t hear how gentle his voice had gotten as much as Shea clearly could, seeing as she kicked him under the table. Her struggle to hide a smirk pushed him further toward believing she wasn’t truly upset with him. 

“Did you not notice the part where you would’ve died if I’d decided to leave you.” She was good at sounding upset though.

“That’s not true! I was recovering just fine.”

“Oh my god, you’re both so boring!” Merrick slammed something down between them, hard enough the table shook. “Besides, you broke the stupid tracker anyway. So, you can drop the act now.”

“Did you hear something, Drew?”

“Knock it off or I actually will break your little pet nerd's arm.”

“Shut up! He’s not my pet,” Shea snapped, finally facing her brother. “And if you touch him I swear—”

“You’ll make me regret it, yeah, yeah, you’ve been making the same threat since you learned to talk. So if he’s not your pet and he’s not your boyfriend what is he? And why are you two all matchy-matchy?”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

Drew blanched, knowing what he was going to say before he said it. The belts. Of course the belts. He’d spent half the night delighting in secretly matching with her. He’d doubted she’d noticed, so of course, her brother had to go and point it out.

To his relief and disappointment, she just rolled her eyes. “They came in a set. Why can’t you just leave me alone?”

“Why should you get to leave!” Merrick shouted, slamming his hands down on the tables and somehow drawing absolutely no attention from the scattered few patrons despite the outburst. He quieted down, leaning forward to rant in a hushed, angry whisper anyway. “Why should you be the only one to get out when the rest of us are stuck playing the loving family missing their sister? They put trackers on us because of you! I wanted out too, She-She! I would have made something of myself and come back for you, but you had to make life worse for the rest of us!”

“Oh, yeah right! If you’d gotten out you would have just done something dramatic and stupid and then forgotten all about us! You are the most selfish, self-centered—”

Drew could feel his tummy twisting, stuck in a fight between two siblings the likes of which he hadn’t witnessed since… Well, not for a long time. He didn’t want to think about how long ago it actually was. He didn’t want a lot of things, at that moment. He didn’t want to be sitting across from a mic-hogging twerp that kept threatening to hurt him. He didn’t want to think about how likely it was he was going to lose his new… friend. He didn’t want to be stuck in the middle of their argument where no outcome looked good for her. 

And he certainly didn’t want to interrupt. He couldn’t hold back a yelp of pain for very long, with Shea’s hands clenched in a boiling fist around the sleeve of his shirt, holding him in place as she slowly caught them both on fire. 

“Drew!” Shea gasped, as he jerked his arm away. The flames went out surprisingly fast and he was befuddled — that was a fun word., befuddled — to see his sleeve was, at the very most, lightly singed. 

He didn’t get a chance to react before she crawled over his lap. Literally crawled. And then sprinted away from the booth. Part of him expected to see her run straight back out the door they came in from, but then she turned the opposite direction and pushed her way through a door labeled “Employee’s Only”. If any of the employees noticed or cared about her presence, he couldn’t hear it.

“I know you. I’ve seen you before.” 

Drew blinked, returning his focus to the purple man, boy, thing across from him. “What are they going to do to her, if you make her go back?”

“Why does that matter to you? You aren’t anything to her. I doubt she would care what happens to you.”

He shrugged, trying not to show how much that stung. “She’s good at making me care about her, even if you’re right that she doesn’t care about me.” 

No. No, she did care about him. He was sure of it. She’d gotten so upset with him just a few days earlier, all because she was worried he might get into trouble for letting her stay with him. And… And she’d just spent the better part of ten minutes lecturing him about not carrying his inhaler. Someone who didn’t care wouldn’t spend that much time on the subject, right? Not to mention her reaction when that neon and denim peacock of a guy had stolen his seat back at the Click-Clack Club! She’d stuck up for him! She didn’t have to do that! It had only been a few hours earlier, but in Drew’s head, it felt like more than a year had passed.

“Why do I know you?”

“I don’t know,” Drew lied. And then crumbled right away under the pressure of Merrick’s glare. At least he managed to be a bit obnoxious about it, muttering, “Mic-hog,” just loud enough to be heard. 

“Of course. You’re the guy that got stage-fright and puked up half the bar last year!”

“That wasn’t me! Lewis switched schools cause of that.”

“Yeah, right, pointdexter—”

“Don’t call me that.”

“— What’s She-She gonna think of you when I tell her about that?”

“I mean, I’m pretty sure she saw me throw up once already.”

“You puked a lot,” Shea interrupted, shakily pushing his shoulder until he scooched all the way into the booth. She squished right up next to him, and if it weren’t for how close she sat he never would have suspected she was trembling, she looked so calm otherwise. Well, if he ignored the fact that she’d pulled the hood of the sweatshirt up over her head, hiding inside the confines of the fabric. He absently thought that she still looked like a cute turtle. “Is your arm…?”

“I’m fine,” he assured her, fidgeting with the hem of his shirt to stop himself from grabbing her hand and pulling it out of her sleeves. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah. Why exactly are you two idiots talking about puking?”

Ignoring the fact that she’d called him an idiot, Drew tapped his fingers on the table, locked in what had to be the weirdest staring contest of his life. He suspected she didn’t know her brother snuck out to go sing karaoke, and he didn’t want to make the situation any worse than it already was. He’d probably tell her about it later, but this seemed neither the time nor the place if he didn’t want her knowing. 

The nameless waitress saved them both. Shea shrank even closer to him as the woman towered over the table. Notebook in hand, she loudly chewed her gum and gestured at them expectantly. 

When nobody said anything she rolled her eyes and demanded, “Whaddya want? I don’t got all night.” 

Drew had to wonder who was going to be responsible for paying for the burgers that none of them seemed eager to eat.

“Are you going to take care of her?” Merrick sighed as the waitress stomped off. 

Shea quirked an eyebrow, sounding somewhere between confused and annoyed when she snapped, “I don’t need taking care of.”

“Oh, please. The five of us need more taking care of than anyone else on this planet. Especially Hego… Um… Heath. He’s a wreck over this. Can you believe he seriously bought the kidnapped story?”

“I wish I could say I was surprised.”

“Can we make a deal?” Merrick asked, leaning forward on his seriously scrawny arms. Drew would really have to ask Shea what her family looked like before the comet. There was no way someone as stick-thin as her brother could have survived as a… typical human. He knew he was pretty skinny too, but not that skinny. Shea was that skinny. Maybe he didn’t eat much either. “Like when we were kids?”

“What kind of deal?” 

“One where you get to stay with poindexter here and—”

“Don’t call him that,” Shea interrupted. He tried not to grin. 

“Ugh, fine whatever. You stay with… him, and I don’t tell Mom and Dad where you are.”

Shea nodded, but Drew didn’t miss the way she shivered. Lingering nerves, he assumed.  “What do you want?”

“I want three things from you.” 

Greasy burgers were dropped in front of them without another word. Drew bit into his to keep from saying anything. He barely resisted the urge to spit it back out. The damn thing was half frozen. He really hated the diner. 

As he internally ranted about how a diner like the Daynight could do so much better if it leaned more heavily into its theme (peeling painted suns and stars just didn’t cut it) and actually made decent food, Merrick demanded, “I want to know how you two met.” Before either of them could explain, he continued, “I want you to promise you’ll at least try to find a way to send a letter or something on special days like Christmas. You're my baby sister, I’m gonna be worried sick about you. And Wego misses you like crazy.”

“I can do that,” Shea agreed. “At least, I’ll try.”

“And the last thing,” Merrick said, voice slowing considerably. Drew couldn’t help but think someone ought to have turned the jukebox on for this conversation. It could use some dramatic music, really. “I want you to tell me why you ran away.”

A jolt shot through Drew and he glanced at Shea’s hands, worried she might flare up again. In almost a week of living together, he hadn’t managed to pry that out of her. He’d given up trying because, in the end, he knew it was her business. That didn’t kill the curiosity the way he wished it would. 

He also knew he wasn’t her brother. They may have had some fun over the last several days but that meant nothing in comparison to the people she’d spent her entire life around until a week earlier. 

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Did it have something to do with the Hunter?”

“Who is…?” Shea elbowed him, hard enough to make him shut up.

“Yeah, it did, alright? I’m not talking about it. Not now. Maybe not ever. Choose something else or…”

“Fine,” Merrick relented. “Don’t tell me. Just… I don’t want that guy finding you. He’s not like the other villains, Shea. And I know you know that too. I don’t know why you’ve always hated him so much, but I know he deserves it.”

“Yeah, he does. What’s your third term?”

Merrick smiled, and for a brief moment Drew could actually see the family resemblance. He smiled exactly the same way she did. 

“Go… wherever home is for you now. Be safe. Remember how much I… we… love you ‘kay, sis?”

Without so much as a goodbye, Merrick was gone, leaving them squished one-sided in a booth together. If he hadn’t seen him walk out the diner doors himself, he might have been tempted to aimlessly look out for the nano-nuisance. 

“Crybaby,” Drew murmured, nudging Shea’s shoulder gently. She laughed — a choked sort of sound — and buried her face in her hands.
After a long moment, she laughed again. “He didn’t even wait around so we could explain how we met.”

“Do you think he’s gonna come back?”

“Nah. Me-Me Merrick made his grand exit. He’s not coming back in here. It would ruin the show. And besides, he was always terrible at making deals. He just likes the attention he gets when he tries to.”

“I can tell.” It seemed too easy, but somehow he knew she was right. He wouldn’t be coming back. “Are you going to be alright?”

She shrugged and climbed out of the booth, pulling him out with her. “It’s not gonna kill me.” 

“What now, pest?”

Her eyes were wide and watery when she glanced up at him, and it was all too easy to remember how young she was, too young to have arguments like the one she’d just had. “You’re such a dork. Take me home?”

He was more than happy to oblige.

Chapter Text

Over the past week, the mirror, as it seemed to for so many teenage girls, had become Shea’s worst enemy. In her more selfish moments, she dreaded looking into the damn thing more than she dreaded the thought of being forced back to Go City, more than wondering what would happen to Drew if she were. The bruises from the Hunter had long since faded, but she could still see them like phantoms on her skin. He didn’t scare her anymore  – obviously, nothing did – but the fact that her parents— Ugh! It didn’t matter anyway; she was never going back. Merrick… Well, Merrick had always been a bit self-centered, in his own weird way, craving any attention he could get. But even when they were little the one thing he wasn’t was a rat. Well, so long as nobody had hurt or scared him. Then he was a huge baby and an even bigger tattle-tale. 

She couldn’t help smiling at her reflection as she thought about the conspiratorial grin that he’d plastered on his face so often, swearing he’d take the fall for whatever petty crime she’d committed, so long as she helped him with his next performance. When she was seven, she’d tried building a jump for her bike, despite their parents strictly forbidding it. He’d taken the fall for the bent handlebars, crying that he hadn’t meant to crash into her, and the next day she’d begrudgingly taken on the role of magicians’ assistant in the town talent show. 

Hell, even after the comet he’d been there for her. When she was nine, about a month after they’d been released from the lab and into the mid-build Go Tower, she’d pitched a fit and shattered several glass bottles full of the labs' special medication. She never even asked! Merrick just took the fall, claiming he’d gone into her bedroom to show off his powers and “gotten a little mixed up”. A week later his room was moved to the newly completed portion of the tower, as far away from her as possible. She never even knew if he’d received a proper punishment, but she’d let him answer questions for her in their next interview, and somehow that seemed to be enough for him.

Her smile dropped faster than it appeared. If he hadn’t had that stupid tracker! All night she’d felt a shameful sort of relief that it’d been him who’d found her. If it had to be anyone, at least it was the one brother she could generally trust. But he was right there – right there – and she couldn’t save him. But what could she have done? What could she have said to help him? “ Hey, Merrick! Why don’t we perform surgery right here in the Daynight and get that tracker out so you can come live with me and the guy who—”

Shea poked at her phantom bruises, wishing just a little that it would hurt, before sighing and wiping at tears she refused to let fall. She couldn’t save Merrick, but he’d be okay. He didn’t mind being a hero the way she did, and he was probably eating up the attention her disappearance got them. He wouldn’t rat her out, because he never would. 

“Shea!” Drew’s voice called to her, snapping her out of her self-pitying internal rambling. “Hurry up in there, would you? Other people need the shower too, you know!”

Drew. He was half the reason she hated looking in the mirror so much. If he hadn’t been so concerned about her maybe she never would have noticed how skinny she actually was! She’d been eating so much more, more each day, and kept finding herself hungry in a way she hadn’t been in years. And still, she could see her bones straining against her discolored skin like they were trying to force their way out. 

“I’ll be out when I’m out,” she snipped at the door, as Drew’s incessant knocking started up again. “Just hold on!”

“But I have to— Nngh!” Listening to him stomp off, she smirked, though she felt a little bad. She’d been on the other side of the door plenty of times as a kid, between Merrick making sure his hair looked flawless and her mother bathing the twins, so she knew how annoying it could be. Well, Drew could learn to wait his turn. And besides, it wasn’t like she told him to go pee in the sink like Heath used to tell her when he was busy checking out his (then non-existent) muscles!

The oversized flannel made her feel like she was drowning (a feeling she was quite familiar with) but she pulled it on anyway with a huff. She liked it better when she couldn’t see what was going on beneath her clothes. At least then she could pretend. And she could practice her smile in the mirror and make sure it was just good enough to pretend she wasn’t worried about Drew’s friends coming over. 

He’d asked her, sometime in the silent walk back home (a word she’d used hoping to get any sort of reaction out of him, only to be met with disappointment when he didn’t even notice)  whether or not it was “a bad time to mention my friends would like to come over tomorrow.” She’d told him it wasn’t a big deal, and it was still his apartment, but now that they were on their way she was regretting saying it was fine. 

She’d been so focused on her weird desire for him to put an arm around her, take her hand, just do something to try and comfort her, that she hadn’t really been paying attention to the question anyway. But really, what was up with that? 

She knew he was embarrassed or whatever, that she’d caught him having nightmares, but he’d been acting weird… er ever since and, it was starting to get on her nerves. One minute he’d be holding her by the arm as she listened to his excited babbling about karaoke or how “cool” the new piece of tech in the school's lab was. And the next he’d be lecturing her about how dangerous it was for her to leave the apartment (which, apparently, didn’t apply if he wanted her to go out with him). And the moment after that he’d be weirdly distant, acting like he wasn’t moving further away on the couch when she sat next to him, or locking himself in his room playing music so he wouldn’t have to listen to her. 

Maybe, if she could stop herself from falling so easily into step when he was in a good mood it would be easier to let it go. But the moments in between the lectures and avoidance were so nice, so normal, as far as things with Drew went, that she couldn’t help it. She’d been looking forward to karaoke almost as much as he was, feeding off his energy. She didn’t know what to make of it when he’d go from the Drew she thought she knew to the one that didn’t seem to like her very much at all.

It wasn’t even the general weird behavior that bothered her – he was a weird guy, she got that – it was just… she was pretty sure a few days before he would have at least tried to comfort her and she just wished… No, she didn't, it was just— God she felt like him with all his back and forth and strange stammering! It’d just be nice if he still cared, was all! 

He did try to comfort her, she reminded herself, he’d taken her hand in the diner and for that, she’d burned him, however accidentally, and he’d even tried to talk to her when they first left but she’d gotten unnecessarily snappy when talk was all he did, so he’d been silent the rest of the way, and she’d been hoping too much that he would come closer to her to make herself move closer to him and this whole thing was so dumb!

And, she also had to admit to herself, it wasn’t even his actual behavior that served as her primary concern. She wanted so badly to blame it all on him, to say he was being weird because the screaming, whimpering nightmares he’d had that night had embarrassed him. As long as she could pin it all on him acting like a big baby over something totally – well, somewhat – normal, she could hold out hope that things would go back to the way they used to be.

But she couldn’t blame anything on him. 

She knew what it was really about. 

She’d kissed him. 

And he’d told her off for it. 

So, she’d ruined everything, all because she’d stupidly thought that was what he wanted. That maybe he liked her. That maybe he—

Shea groaned, tightened her belt as far as it would go, and hurried out of the bathroom. The faster she stopped looking in the mirror the faster she’d stop thinking so much. She’d barely opened the door, still toweling off her wet hair, before Drew barreled past her, slamming it shut in his rush. 

“Jeez, impatient much?” she muttered and decided she might as well just throw the towel into her room. He wouldn’t be coming out any time soon. A moment after it hit the floor she decided, not without rolling her eyes, that she should at least hang it on the doorknob before Drew could kick off whining about the musty smell of wet towels again. A definite once-was-enough lecture if she’d ever heard one – she’d left it on the floor for like five minutes! She was going to go pick it up, but he’d started cooking and she could smell all the spices and obviously had to go steal a bite. He’d cringed at the sight of her eating a whole jalapeno and wandered off into the bathroom only to come back with her still-wet towel in his bandaged hands and a lecture about… well, musty scents and something about chemical reactions and bacteria. She’d only listened to half of it. 

Drew, practically skipping, joined her on the couch a minute later, sitting altogether too close which only served to confuse her more. Not that she minded the proximity. Though she had to wonder why he’d claimed he needed a shower when he very clearly hadn’t taken one. 

Was he that easily embarrassed that he actually couldn’t just admit he had to pee? 

Or was he so distracted that he’d completely forgotten? 

Probably he just didn’t want to deal with having to redo the bandages. Really, he’d likely be fine without them, but every time she caught a glimpse of the raw, ripped flesh on his chin and palms she felt a flash of guilt that she’d much prefer to suppress. At least bearing bandages the way she’d been forcing him meant she could ignore what she’d done to him.  

Whatever it was, he hadn’t showered and she added it to the list of things about him that confused her. One day, she swore to herself, one day she would figure out what was going on in Drew Lipsky’s dorky brain.

“Are you still… alright? After last night?” he asked, fidgeting with a pen he’d left on the coffee table. She would have bought his concern more if he weren’t bouncing in place eagerly glancing between the door and the kitchen table.

“Yes,” she assured him, for what must have been the fifteenth time since they’d made it home the night before. She managed to suppress her growing exasperation, and continued, “Yes, I’m fine. Like I said last night, Merrick… He’s got his own stuff, but we can trust him.” She had to trust him. If it were Heath he wouldn’t have let her get as far as the next street, and if it were the twins… There wasn’t enough candy in the world to get them to disobey a hero’s order, one of them would have run off to snitch before she could’ve blinked. But Merrick had always been more like her. He liked the attention that came with being a hero, just not the lack of control. She didn’t like any part of being a hero, so… it was better that she was the one who’d left. Wasn’t it? He’d be okay until she could figure it out, right? Right, of course right.

“And you’re sure you don’t want to join our game?” he asked, again, glancing once more towards the kitchen table where he’d set up a strange, elaborate-looking board game. She vaguely recalled Heath and Wren trying to get her to play it with them no more than a few days before the comet. Or at least she thought it had been Hideaways and Hydras but that was so long ago. “We can whip up a character for you right now! I’m sure James won’t mind at all. Probably.”

She scoffed and shook her head. “Yeah, that’d be a no. You and your nerdy friends can enjoy your game.” A small part of her, so small she could crush it to bits, did want to play. He’d known just how to appeal to her when he first asked her to join them, calling it a game focused on telling a story.  But she wasn’t a child! Only children still played games… Right? He’d said all of his friends were older than him, but that didn’t mean anything, did it? He couldn’t keep calling her a child if she proved she was more mature than him. But part of her couldn’t help but feel a little left out, knowing she’d be sitting awkwardly by herself as he – they! – ignored her for a game of make-believe.

“Let's at least make you a character in case you change your mind!” Despite her continued insistence that the puppy-dog pout didn’t work for him, the one he gave her almost made her agree. And it was clear he could tell when he added, “Come on, we’ll have to hurry so it’s done before they get here! We could make your character part dragon.”

“I’m not a—”

“I know. But it’s still funny.”

“It’s really not.”

“Is too!”

“It would be funnier to make my character a… I don’t remember what it was called but I saw some… thing… made of fire in that guidebook of yours.”

Drew gasped, “Oh! An inferno-clan! Technically, they’re not player characters but I could work out the math easy enough and I’m sure James wouldn’t mind so much. He doesn’t usually prefer us to play as variants but I’m sure he’d make an exception!”

Before she could respond, ready to give in under the pressure of his grin, she was saved by the bell. Or rather, the buzz of the intercom system. 

“Looks like it’s too late for it now anyway.” She didn’t bother suppressing her smirk, especially once he settled a glare on her. A glare that got harsher when she laughed at him for stumbling over the blanket in his attempt to get off the couch. 

“You keep laughing,” he sneered, “and I’ll tell them you want to play the fairy princess! Or— or the damsel in distress!”

She snorted. “Please. I’m no damsel. And I’m not all that easy to distress.” (Her time staring into the mirror notwithstanding). “You’re not going to embarrass me with that nonsense, Doc.”

Drew pressed the button to let his friends up, snapping, “Nngh! Just zip it!” 

And all at once she was just as distressed as she claimed not to be. Drew was nice and all – he was great – but what if his friends had seen her face, plastered across the world as it seemed to be? Would they be as oddly protective and understanding? Or would the monetary reward corrupt them? From what little Drew had said about them it sounded like they had more money than he did – a lot more, at that – but if she’d learned anything… having money only made people want more. That much she could credit her parents with teaching her. Merrick might not spill her secrets but she wasn’t certain Drew’s posse, as he had all too awkwardly referred to them, could be held in similar regard.

But at least with them coming over Drew seemed to have forgotten that he’d tried to insist they would need to have a more serious conversation about what had happened with Merrick at some point. Even her complimenting his punch (and it really had had some force behind it, he just needed to minimize the arc a bit more and he’d be pretty good) hadn’t been enough to make him drop the subject. And when he’d seemingly realized that she was trying to distract him and brought the conversation back to her, she’d taken her escape into her bedroom with the door that didn’t lock, but which he knew he wouldn't open anyway.

“Hey wait a minute!” Drew blurted, as he moved back toward the couch. “You went looking in the players' guidebook? I knew it! You do want to play! Really, Shea, I don’t understand why you refuse to admit you’re a nerd at heart.” His voice got louder with each word as his utterly ridiculous excitement grew. She could tell it was taking all his effort not to start bouncing in place. He turned on his heel, heading toward the kitchen table and his elaborate game. “Come along now, I’ll get a player sheet ready for you. You can ask James about playing an inferno-clan yourself.”

“Someone needs to teach you how to do a cartwheel.”

That made him freeze and he turned to stare at her, an eyebrow raised in blatant confusion. 

“You’re just the kind of guy who should be doing cartwheels whenever you get excited,” she explained with a shrug. “I don’t know how you have so much energy stored up in there, but hey, it’s clear that you do. So, someone should teach you to cartwheel.”

His face flickered through half a dozen emotions in as many seconds, before he finally settled on waving a dismissive hand, and said, “I couldn’t even manage a proper somersault as a child, I hardly think I could manage a cartwheel.”

“You’re joking, right? What kind of kid can’t do a somersault?” 

She delighted in watching as his ears turned pink. 

“I had other talents to focus on,” he grumbled, dropping the player sheet with a less-than-subtle hint of bitterness and stomping off into the kitchen. 

Obviously, she followed him. “Like what?” she demanded, popping up onto the counter. “Adding two plus two?”

“I can dance!” Drew blurted, and just as fast smacked his hands over his mouth, eyes so wide behind his glasses she worried they’d pop right out. “I mean— I don’t actually— It was only— just zip it.”

“I didn’t even say anything! What’s wrong with knowing how to dance?” She did sort of want to dare him to prove it, though. “What kind of—?”

Before she could ask him what kind of dance he knew, a sharp knock at the door interrupted her. She glanced toward the sound, and before she knew what was happening, Drew smacked a hand over her mouth. 

“Please,” he begged. “Please just don’t say anything about this right now! Not in front of them.”

She stared wide-eyed up at him. He wasn’t covering her mouth with any real force, just enough to let her know he wanted her quiet but it still shocked her that he would do it at all. She could feel the bandages, rough against her lips, and for half a moment she considered shoving Drew. Although, his fingers were warm and soft against her cheek, and part of her quite enjoyed the contact. Certainly, she preferred it over his avoiding touching her as though she’d break. Or give him the plague. She also had a brief moment to wonder why a man whose favorite movie was all about dancing, seemed so embarrassed to admit he knew how to dance.

Taking in the panicked look he shot towards the door as the knocking started again, loud and continuous, she gently pried his hand off her face, deciding to let the whole thing go. For the time being. Only then did he seem to realize what he’d done, and she had to cut off his apology. 

“It’s… Fine, or whatever. But go let your friends in before I hurt them. Do they always knock like that?”

She could feel his relief as he rushed for the door, and she debated between following and staying put. But she felt safer when she was closer to him, and though she was quite confident his nerd friends wouldn’t pose any physical threat to her, by his side she stayed, hopping off the counter to follow. 

“Really,” he assured her, “my friends are pretty great! I think you’ll like them!”

He turned the knob and was promptly knocked aside as the door swung open and three guys, older than Drew and definitely much older than her, shoved their way inside. She couldn’t quite put a finger on it but something about all three of them instantly left a bitter taste in her mouth. 

Oh, alright. She knew exactly what it was. They came in, pushing Drew aside with hardly a glance in his direction, talking and joking so loudly she couldn’t help casting a curious glance in the hallway to see if anyone was opening their doors to see what the noise was all about. And the moment they saw her each one froze in turn, fixing her with a look she was all too familiar with.

And she was all too okay with Drew putting a hand on her shoulder and pulling her closer as he shut the door. 

“Guys,” he said, voice cutting through the silence like… Nothing, it was so obvious they weren’t paying any attention to him. And that made her even more uncomfortable than the looks they all tried to hide as she stared back. “This is my new roommate I was telling you about.”

Forcing herself to stand up straight, she inched away from him. Not enough that he would drop his hand, but enough that she didn’t look quite so much like a child hiding behind her mother. She’d never been one to shy away from strangers, and just because she wanted to like them and make Drew happy didn’t mean she had to feel any sort of nerves. And if Drew trusted them enough to believe they wouldn’t squeal then she could try to trust them too. 

“Shea,” he said, pointing out the one who looked just a little younger than the others – Chinese, if she had to guess, although she knew better than to make assumptions, “This is Bobby. You spoke with him once. I think.” Bobby nodded, though he seemed a little shocked. Drew continued, pointing to the… guy (since from the way they carried themselves alone she couldn’t justify calling any of them a man) closest to himself, “And this is Kashwin Ramesh—”

“You can call me—”

“I’m James,” the one in the middle interrupted, holding out a hand. 

She didn’t want to take it, but all four of them were watching her expectantly, and, well, etiquette training could be hard to ignore. 

“Shea,” she replied, reaching out to shake the hand of this James, who she could tell, like Heath did on missions, seemed to consider himself the de facto leader of his friends. 

He took her hand, and before she could react, he pulled her hand up to his face, kissing her fingers. It wasn’t necessarily unlike what Drew had done when he’d been overly concerned about the burns on her hands, but something about it – something about James – had her snatching her hand back so fast she stumbled back into Drew. He shot a strange glance between her and his friend but said nothing about the exchange. 

Ugh. Her fingers were wet.

Wiping her slobbered on fingers off against her jeans, she glared at Drew as he said, “Shea was just saying she’d like to join us for Hideaways and Hydras.” And the grin he shot down at her could only be described as pure, conniving, evil. But he still had a hand on her shoulder, and hadn’t pushed her away from him…

So, how could she protest?